


Human Error

by jemariel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (fully consensual), 69 (Sex Position), Alcohol, Alternate Season/Series 09, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Arguing, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Domestic Dean Winchester, Drunk Sex, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Human Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Idiots in Love, Injured Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Masturbation, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Only One Bed, Pray for Sam, Sharing a Bed, Suggestion of a threesome, Wendigo, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2020-12-23 23:02:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21089255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemariel/pseuds/jemariel
Summary: Cas is human now, and things aren't going to plan.(Not that Dean had a plan. Nope. No plans of any kind.)Anyway, what's a Winchester to do when everything he tries seems to blow up in his face?Go hunting. Obviously.(Posts on Fridays until complete)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WOOOOOO this one got longer than intended. Surprise, surprise. Anyway, it's basically finished, but I'll post it weekly until it's done.
> 
> Big thanks to [Shealynn88](https://shealynn88.tumblr.com/) and [Sharkfish](https://reallyelegantsharkfish.tumblr.com/) for reading and encouraging me along the way, and to [Elanor-n-Evermind](https://elanor-n-evermind.tumblr.com/) for basically being the other half of my writing brain these days.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Dean’s not actually sure if that’s true, but it’s just one of those things, you know? One of those things you _ know _. Dean can’t remember where he first heard it. Probably in a cereal commercial on a motel TV with bad color, turning the milk green and Tony the Tiger a violent red. 

So maybe it’s just advertising, but in any case, Dean’s been perfecting his breakfast cooking since it really sank in that the bunker was theirs for good. Today, for no particular reason, it’s french toast. With bacon, obviously. The aroma of eggs and butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and bacon all combine in the kitchen to create the kind of warm, homey satisfaction he never dared dream of. 

He’s just flipping the last slice in the pan and the bacon is dripping grease on a tray when he hears footsteps. He glances over his shoulder to see Cas in the doorway, clearly already showered and wearing the kind of tight shorts and T-shirt Dean’s more used to seeing on Sam. The shorts ride higher on Cas’s thighs than they do on Sam’s. Not that he’s looking. He’s focused on his french toast.

“Perfect timing,” he says, leaving the last slice to sizzle in the pan while he grabs an empty plate for Cas. “Help yourself, there’s a bunch already—”

Cas side-steps his out-stretched plate, aiming for the pantry cupboard in the back of the kitchen. Dean’s gaze follows him, desperately trying not to pay attention to the curve of his ass in spandex or the winged ridges of his shoulder blades under the T-shirt. He just watches as Cas opens up the pantry and turns back around with a Tiger Milk bar. “Seriously?”

Cas looks up at him, finally, then looks around at the pans and the plates, the bacon cooling on the rack, the Corningware full of finished french toast slices steaming up the lid. Then he looks down at the protein bar in his hand. “Oh.”

“I made breakfast,” Dean says, maybe a little dickishly.

“I can see that.”

“So, what’s with the emergency rations?”

The wrapper of the protein bar crinkles in Cas’s hand as he fiddles with the flap. It’s a terribly human thing to do, the sort of idle fidgeting that he never used to do, before—_ before— _and Dean’s still not sure where he picked them up or how to read these new tics and tells on him. “I was going to go for a run,” Cas says at last.

Dean huffs. “You’ve been hanging out with Sam too much,” he grumbles, going back to the pan to rescue the last toast before it burns. “The only reason to run is if you got vamps on your tail,” he says to the pan, wincing as he sees little puffs of smoke curling up from the underside of the toast. He’s too late.

“Running is a very efficient form of cardiovascular exercise,” Cas says, sounding all at once more like an angel than he has in weeks. “It builds muscle tone, aids with respiratory functionality, and promotes healthy cholesterol levels. I need to take care of this body, Dean, now that it’s—”

Dean holds his breath.

“—more than a vessel.”

Dean lets it out.

This last piece of toast is fucked anyway, so he flicks off the burner and turns around to lean against the counter, crossing his arms and his ankles. “Yeah, well, there’s more to being human than keeping in shape, you know.”

Castiel squints at him, curiosity and wariness. That one, he can read. “Such as?”

“Such as—” Dean falters and shrugs. “Lotsa stuff. Enjoying life, you know? The little things. Not just grinding all the time, but. I dunno.”

Cas is still just watching him, like he’s waiting for a magician to hurry up and finish sawing the girl in half already. “Living life, Cas, just—just living,” Dean finally spits out just to have something to say. “Good food, drinkin’ beer, pretty ladies—_ living. _”

Cas’s squint turns into a glare, which, no, not good. “I am living. That’s all I am capable of.”

“That’s not what I—” But Castiel has already turned to exit the kitchen, opening the wrapper with a passive-aggressive _ rip _.

Wind thoroughly depleted from his sails, Dean surveys the fruits of his labor with a critical eye. He finds he doesn’t have much of an appetite anymore. Does french toast make good leftovers? He honestly has no idea.

That’s when Sam pops in, clearly just returning from his own run. His face is sheened in sweat and his T-shirt sticks to him in tell-tale patterns. “Hey,” he says. “Is that french toast?”

“Yeah, knock yourself out,” Dean grumbles, pushing away from the counter. Sam goes straight for the Corningware with his long octopus arms, and a sad tendril of steam belches out from under it.

“What’s eating you?” Sam asks, shoving half a piece of toast in his mouth without syrup or anything. Dean’s scowl gets deeper.

“Nothin’,” he lies, then grabs the frying pan off the stove and dumps the last burned toast in the garbage.

What a waste.

~~

Things had not gone according to plan. 

Not that Dean had a plan or anything. Nope. No, when he'd invited Cas to stay in the bunker with them, he'd been motivated entirely by friendly camaraderie and a desire to lend a helping hand to a friend in need. _ Of course _ Cas would stay in the bunker with them. Where else would he go? He couldn't kick the guy out on his ear. 

It wasn't until Cas had been living with them for maybe a fortnight that Dean realized something wasn't quite clicking. That the nagging pull way down in his gut, the pangs in his chest like someone plucking a guitar string, were directly Cas-related instead of just generic needing to get laid.

Which he tries. Tries and strikes out, but it still counts. Sort of.

After just one Jack ‘n’ Coke, he ends up going for a long drive instead, out on the arrow-straight Kansas backroads, watching the blackness outside the cone of his headlights, stealing glances at the endless starfield, and trying not to think.

Has it always been this way with Cas? He really can’t say. He’d never given it a lot of thought, but it feels like it’s been part of him forever. If he lets himself wax rhapsodic—and what else are long night-drives for?—it’s like it got woven into his soul, somehow, somewhere between “You should show me some respect” and “I did all of it for you.” It’s been years since Cas pulled him from the pit, and he doesn’t think about it much anymore—too much other crap going on—but the guy did put him back together, literally, out of dirt and ashes and a memory.

Maybe... Maybe he’d wired something in there.

Probably not.

It’s probably just a good old-fashioned, garden-variety infatuation.

One that’s lasted half a decade, now. Right.

Dean signals left at the next T in the road, not even sure why he bothers at who-knows-what-o’clock in the morning, but some habits don’t break easy.

There had been one time—exactly one time—in the early days, when he’d let himself think about it. It hadn’t even been on purpose. He’d just—he was watching this porn (gay porn, because whatever, he was in the mood) and the bottom—this guy had looked _ exactly _ like Cas. The hair, the jaw, the nose, the lips—the fucking _ lips _ —but like if Cas were slender and toned and scattered with tattoos, with hips and ass that did not quit. And the way this guy _ moved _, Dean still gets to half-mast if he thinks about it for too long.

Especially if he pictures Cas doing it.

Jesus, he’s gonna run himself off the road.

Dean grips the wheel harder with one hand and shifts his dick in his jeans with the other.

But the memory hurts, too, the lingering sting of humiliation. There he was, stripping his dick in time with the sinuous, sinful rolls of Cas’s look-alike’s gorgeous body, and he must have thought about Cas a little _ too _ hard, because right before he tipped over the point of no return— _ whoosh, _incoming angel wings. Right behind him, too, where Cas couldn’t help but see every god damn thing. The guys on the screen. Dean scrambling ludicrously to his feet with his dick hanging out of his boxers instead of just slamming the laptop shut first thing. Fucking dumbass reflexes.

The worst was, Cas hadn’t even seemed to really get what he was seeing. He’d just looked from Dean to the porno and back—until Dean got his shit together enough to hide the evidence—with that perpetually confused frown and funny little puppy-tilt he’d done so often in those days, and when Dean came up with some bullshit excuse for why he’d been “praying” for him, Cas had just gone with it. Was heaven really that lame? The guy was older than friggin’ dirt, and he still somehow didn’t know what sex looked like? Or jerking off? 

Anyway.

Dean had really not cared for being examined like a bug under glass. And it wasn’t long after that that Dean had confirmed that Castiel was a good little Christian boy after all and seemed determined to stay that way. The way he’d sweated through his trenchcoat at that brothel— 

Yeah. It was pretty clear that Castiel, Angel of the Lord, was not an option.

Cas, the human, though.

The thought zings through him like a shock from a socket. Castiel, with his veneer of angelic purpose and power stripped away. Castiel, reliant on his blood and body, just like the rest of them, full of unfamiliar, untamed needs and—

Dean has to shift himself in his jeans again.

Maybe that’s why he’s so determined to show Cas a good time.

_ Not like that, idiot, _ he thinks at his own dick.

Except, okay, maybe just like that.

And he has no idea, absolutely _ no idea _ , if Cas is any more of an option now than when he had his wings. Maybe he wouldn’t be into guys. Maybe he wouldn’t be into _ Dean. _Dean’s been too chickenshit to even flirt, telling himself it’s because there’s too much shared history between them now to risk on a little horizontal tango.

Not that that’s even all he wants, and that’s more terrifying than any of the rest of it. He wants the little things, like watching a movie under a shared blanket or getting their laundry mixed up and ending up in each other's shirts. He wants the little affectionate touches, his smiles and his laughter, the way his face crinkles up like he can’t help himself—god, he’s so— 

Fucked. Completely fucked, is what Dean is.

Lust is safer. Wanting the guy, that’s simple. This, whatever it is, should send him running for the hills.

Instead, the squeezing ache in his chest just feels like longing. 

Dean drives for a long time, thoughts meandering this way and that, from the past to the present, carefully avoiding the future, and eventually just lingering on little details he’s noticed about Cas in the past few weeks that he’d never seen before. The curl of hair behind his ear, sharper when his hair is damp or dirty, and the soft, tempting patch of skin it reveals. His delicate fingers and square, broad palms. The way he’s still so curious and gentle, even after all they’ve been through, regarding everything from bees to behemoths with the same crystalline blue stare.

By the time Dean gets back to the bunker that night, eyes itchy and fogging up with tiredness, he’s come to no solid conclusions.

None he wants to admit to, anyway.

But he’s pretty sure he’s in love with Cas.

~~

There’s only one bar in Lebanon, and it’s not a very good one. It’s dimly lit by flickering, pale fluorescents and the neon beer signs on the walls; there’s a thin film of grease over everything, and all of the furniture has some kind of “character.” (This chair’s got its foam padding held in with duct tape; that stool swivels at about a fifteen degree angle.) Still, it’s not the worst Dean’s ever seen, and the pool tables aren’t too tilted, so that’s something.

“Dean, what are we doing here?”

Cas looks grumpy. Which has become the norm, but still. Dean musters a grin as he sets Cas’s beer down in front of him on the waist-high table. “Just hanging out,” he says. “Thought it’d be good to get out of the bunker for a bit.”

“We went on a hunt last week.”

Dean shrugs. “Yeah, but that was work. Besides, when was the last time we just spent time together, y’know?” Butterflies whirl up in his stomach as he says that, a quick flurry of feeling, and he can’t look in Cas’s eyes.

“We live together,” Cas says, still frowning.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Just drink your beer and pick a cue.”

Cas spends a long time examining the pool cues, long enough that Dean’s tempted to go over there and tell him it actually doesn’t matter, they’re all the same in a shitty dive like this. By the time he finally joins Dean at the pool table, half of Dean’s beer is gone. “Okay,” he says, sidling up a little closer to Cas than necessary, telling himself It’s all for the sake of teaching or whatever. “Playing pool is almost as important a skill for a hunter as marksmanship. So—”

“How so?”

Damn that squint. Dean licks his lips and falters, realizing how close to Cas he’s put himself. “Hunting doesn’t exactly bring home the bacon. Do you know how much money I’ve hustled out of gullible truck drivers? Because I don't. Or, trying to get info—it’s way easier to soften somebody up over a pool table than just asking them shit straight out. Besides," he finishes with a shrug, "it’s fun. And that's not something we get a whole lot of in this life." 

Cas processes this, his frown shifting from grumpy to contemplative. When he turns back to Dean, he looks more receptive, the crease between his brows finally, _ finally _ unwrinkling. “Okay,” he says, very serious. Dean licks his lips again and has to step back.

“Okay,” Dean says, a little breathless. “Now, first thing to work on is your break.”

On his first try, only two of the balls go drifting off toward the corners. “You can do it harder,” Dean says, and wants to bite his tongue off. “You’re, uh. You’re not gonna break ‘em.”

Fuck, those are not words he ever needed to say while Cas was bending down over a pool table, his jeans faded and second-hand and stretched tight over his ass. Yeah, no. Bad timing.

The second break goes better, and then they’re off and running. Dean starts simple and resists the urge to show off because he wants Cas to enjoy this, dammit. And it seems to be working. Dean keeps up the encouragement and gentle instruction, and Cas blossoms. He’s laser-focused and determined, but after a particularly good corner shot, Dean catches him in a satisfied grin and a subtle fist-pump of triumph. It’s thrilling, more than Dean even expected, watching the crust crack a little, seeing the tension start to shake loose. It makes it hard to get his breath in the stale, smokey air of the bar.

Dean’s just basking in the glow of Cas’s genuine smile when he’s startled by a hand on his shoulder and a soft, feminine voice.

“Dean?”

Shit. “Hey,” he says, scrambling in his memory banks for a name. Linda. Lucy. Lora. “Layla?”

She grins, so that must be right. She’s bottle blond and busty with overly glossy pink lipstick and a plunging neckline. Dean remembers her, dimly. He’s pretty sure she’s got a curling vine of a tattoo up the back of her thigh and the round of her ass. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” she says, her eyes flicking down to the collar of his shirt. “What’re you boys up to tonight?”

“Uh.” Her hand lingers on his shoulder as her gaze slides to Cas. “Just shootin’ some pool,” he says.

“You gonna introduce me to your friend?” she asks, and he does not like the tone of her voice. Predatory. A fiercely protective urge rises up in his throat.

“Cas, this is Layla,” he says. “Friend of mine.”

“A friend,” Cas says, dry, with an unimpressed arch of his eyebrow. Dean shrugs one shoulder, helpless, and Cas turns to Layla. “Pleasure to meet you,” he says and offers his hand to shake.

“So,” Layla says, leaning on the pool table and giving Dean a frankly amazing view of her ass— and then he’s watching Cas’s gaze drop very obviously down to Layla’s cleavage, and Dean is a mess of conflicting emotions. “You any good? I know Dean’s a star shooter.”

Dean bites his lip.

“Uhm.” Cas swallows, and his grip on the pool cue goes white-knuckle tight. “Dean was teaching me.”

Layla glances over her shoulder, a glint in her eye. “I bet he’s a good teacher.” Then she stands up and says, “You got room for a third? Cas and I could be on a team, and I bet Dean would still kick both our asses.”

“Actually—” Dean starts, ready to abort mission and get Cas the hell out of there, but then Cas interrupts.

“Of course. We were just finishing up.”

Caught on the back foot, Dean tries to send him a question without words. But Cas is a stone wall, face blank as he bends down to collect the pool balls from under the table. “Uh,” he says. “Yeah, sure, sounds great.”

Layla turns back and steps close, pressing up against Dean’s arm, and what the hell, he’s only human. It feels good. “See?” she purrs for his ears alone. “Cas seems like a smart boy.”

Suddenly it thunks into place like an anvil dropping on his head, exactly what she’s angling for, and _ shit, _if that idea doesn’t go straight to his dick. Maybe—maybe they could. That would—could they?

He needs another beer for this. Or maybe something stronger.

Layla flirts shamelessly throughout the game, trading back and forth between Cas and Dean. It’s not butterflies in Dean’s stomach now, more like a hive of over-caffeinated bees, jittery and loud. He can taste anticipation on his tongue. He doesn’t bother to hide his appreciation for Layla’s form, and he tries to get Cas in on the game, elbowing him and encouraging him to look, even when he rolls his eyes. She’s clearly showing off for both of them, bending low over the table, doing subtly lewd things to her pool cue, so Dean feels absolutely no guilt over ogling her exactly how he wants to. He just hopes Cas is enjoying the view as much as he is, because this— 

This could be something. They could do this.

He could watch Cas find out what a mouth feels like. Could watch his hands exploring her curves. Could help Cas find his rhythm with her, whisper dirty suggestions in his ear and watch him follow them. Maybe he could press up behind him and feel first hand the way his hips move when he— 

“You okay, sugar?” Layla asks from his elbow.

“Hm? Oh. Yeah, fine,” he says with a weak smile. She’s angled fully toward him, and he swears her top has gotten lower. “Just fine.”

“It’s your turn,” she says with a smirk.

“Is it? Hadn’t noticed.” The words come out without conscious thought. He’s three beers deep and feeling loose and fuzzy, so when he goes to take his shot, it takes him a moment to register that Cas has disappeared.

“He went to get a drink,” Layla provides when she sees Dean scanning the thin crowd.

Alarm bells clang inside Dean’s head, and his heart kicks up a notch. He takes a bad shot, not even having to miss deliberately as he keeps trying to pick Cas out of the lineup. As the cue ball barely kisses its target, he spots him leaning on the bar, shoulders tucked up tight around his ears.

“Your turn,” he says, dropping his cue and not even waiting for an acknowledgement before he’s crossing toward Cas.

The bartender is pouring a tall double shot of whiskey when he gets there; Cas picks it up and tosses it back without looking at Dean, wincing and coughing once at the burn. 

“You okay, buddy?” Dean asks with caution.

“I’m fine," he says into the back of his hand. 

“Yeah, clearly.”

“Just go back to the game.”

“Hey, no, I came out here to spend time with you, not—”

Cas scoffs, lifting his eyes to the bottles on the shelf, and this time the smile on his lips is bitter. “No, you didn’t.”

It’s like a slap to the face. “Hey, I didn’t invite her over, and you were the one who asked her to play,” he says.

“I was doing you a favor,” Cas says flatly, catching the bartender for another double shot.

“What favor?”

“You have what you came here for. Leave me alone.”

Dean’s heart hammers up his throat to his mouth, sitting on his tongue like a copper penny. No, no, this is all wrong. “Look, we can go home right now—”

“Save it,” Cas says as the bartender clunks the glass down in front of him.

“Hey, uh,” Dean starts, and this is probably a bad time, but, “you might wanna be careful; you’re not used to—”

Castiel turns to look Dean straight in the eye as he drains the double shot in one gulp. His hand shakes as he sets the empty glass on the sticky wood of the bar.

Dean’s jaw clenches. He throws down some cash and grabs Cas by the arm, fully ready to drag him to the Impala and put him in a cold shower when they get back.

But Cas yanks his arm free, then overbalances and knocks into a barstool with a loud clatter. Dean can practically see the moment those shots hit him in the brain, and he hauls him up by the shoulders. “C’mon, Cas.”

“I don’t need your help,” Cas growls, dark and tight like the look in his eyes.

“Yeah, sure,” Dean grumbles back, steering him toward the door. He makes brief eye contact with Layla, who is loitering by the pool table, looking somewhere between put out and worried. Dean doesn’t care. He just gives her a nod and takes more of Cas’s weight.

“I’m _ fine _,” Cas barks as the cool night air hits them in the face. He wrenches away and stumbles toward the Impala.

Dean’s seen a lot of this kind of _ fine _ in his life, so he hovers while Cas crawls into the passenger seat, then quickly rounds the trunk and slides in behind the wheel. Cas is frowning again, eyes closed and head tilted back on the seat, breathing heavy through his nose. Dean feels like he should say something, anything, and he spends a long moment wracking his brain. “Look, Cas—”

“Just drive.”

Fine. If that’s how he wants it, that’s how it’s gonna be. Dean presses his lips together and starts the engine. It occurs to him belatedly that he was expecting to have a lot longer between his last beer and driving home, but it’s a short, straight drive home and he’s done worse.

They drive for a few minutes in silence. Dean can’t even be bothered to put on music, preferring for once to just let the road noise grind against the rocks in his gut.

After a while, he starts to feel the distinct sensation of being watched. He looks, and Cas is staring at him. Glaring, almost. “What?”

“Why are you here?” he asks.

“I’m taking you home.”

Cas is silent again. Dean hears more than sees him slouch down in his seat.

They’re almost home when Dean hears a soft, wet sniff.

Fuck.

The hard knot in his stomach turns to jello, an emotional whiplash that leaves him lightheaded. In the last fifteen minutes, he’s gone from wanting to fuck the guy to wanting to throttle him to wanting to wrap him up in his arms and never let go.

And he still has no fucking clue what to say.

“You okay?” he asks again, more gently.

“I’m sorry,” Cas says, whisper barely audible over the rumble of tires.

Dean swallows whatever it is crawling up his throat. 

“Drink some water when we get there. You’ll regret it in the morning if you don’t.”

It’s not the right thing to say, but it’s all he’s got.

They drive in silence.

~~

There’s no danger anymore.

No danger in thinking about it.

Dean’s on his back in bed, and he doesn’t even need porn right now. He’d been sparring with Cas today, and he’d had to call it quits or else he was gonna end up rubbing off against his thigh or something equally idiotic. The guy’s all hard-bodied muscle and determination, never letting up for a second, and Dean would be a liar if he said it didn’t rev his engine.

And now, he can think about it.

He can lie in his bed in the dark with one hand on his dick and another on his balls, tugging and rolling, stroking himself firmly and picturing the way Cas’s muscles moved under his T-shirt.

Or let his thighs fall apart a little—lift his knees, dig his heels into the memory foam—and let one hand drift down to poke at his opening while remembering the fire in Cas’s eyes when he’d pinned Dean to the mat.

He can roll over and fuck his fist, remembering Cas’s grunts and groans, the smell of his sweat, the grip of his thighs and the heat of his skin and—

And he can come all over his sheets with Cas’s name on his lips and not have to worry about it because Cas can’t hear him anymore.

There’s no danger.

No danger, except to his lonesome, foolish heart.

~~

Music’s a universal language, right?

“C’mon, it’s Led Freakin’ Zeppelin!”

“This song has been going on for nine minutes.”

“It’s Kashmir! It’s a classic!”

“It’s boring.”

“You take that back.”

Cas just thunks his head back and wriggles his shoulders against the seat. It’s a warm day, one of the last warm days of summer. Dean’s got the windows down and the music loud as they roll past emerald pastures, fields of rust-colored sorghum, and corn so tall it makes a green tunnel for the road, all dotted with bright yellow sunflowers on the shoulders. It should be perfect. Except Cas’s mood has gone from fine to desultory to downright sour over the course of their “scenic” drive, and Dean’s starting to wonder if Cas wouldn’t be better off just going off on his own rather than being cooped up in the bunker with him and Sam. Maybe he should just go explore humanity the old fashioned way because everything Dean tries just goes wrong.

Dean’s chewing on the ashes of that thought when his phone rings. Cas turns down the music while Dean digs it out of his pocket. It’s Sam.

“If this is about your stupid salad dressing, yes, I know, Samantha,” he barks into the phone.

“Jeeze, who pissed in your cornflakes,” Sam says back. Dean has to strain to hear him over the wind noise, and tries to decide if it’s worth juggling phone, steering wheel, and window crank to get it closed.

Sam's saying something he can't make out, though, so he says, “Hang on a second,” and makes an attempt. He’s struggling with his elbows when Cas reaches over, holding the wheel steady while Dean—after getting over his moment of shock—rolls up the window and gets his phone to his other ear. “Thanks,” he murmurs to Cas as he takes the wheel back. Cas just nods without looking at him.

“Where are you guys?” Sam asks.

“On the road. What’s up?”

“Do you remember the hunting cycle for Wendigos? It was about 25 years, right?”

Dean blinks. That takes him back. “Something like that, yeah. Why, you got something?”

“Yeah, I think so. Disappearances up in Crandon, Wisconsin. That’s right in Wendigo territory.”

“Alright, we’re on it.”

“What? Dean, hang on—”

“Text me the details. We’re heading north.”

Without so much as saying goodbye, Dean punches his phone off and puts pedal to the metal.

“What’s going on?” Cas asks.

“Change of plan. We’re hunting.” He’s got a bug-out bag in the trunk with enough clothes to last them both a few days, plus his usual arsenal, and anything else they need they can get on the way. He’s sick of staring at the bunker walls.

“Shouldn’t we go back for Sam?”

Dean shakes his head. “Didn’t sound like a three-man job. We’ll handle it.”

Cas is quiet for a few minutes. The air in the car starts to thicken with the sunshine’s heat, so Dean turns on the AC with a familiar rattle. 

“Dean, I appreciate your confidence in my abilities, but my skills are nowhere near Sam’s level. We would be safer with him along.”

It’s not quite the grumpy grousing he was expecting. Dean does a double-take, then tosses him a smile and claps a hand on his knee. “I’m not worried about it, Cas.”

“Well. I am.”

“Hey, if things get too hairy, Sam can come join the party. It’s only one day’s drive.”

Looking somewhat mollified, Cas sighs and settles back into the seat.

In the name of the fragile peace between them, Dean even puts on something other than Led Zeppelin.

Even though he’s wrong about Kashmir.

~~

By the time they check into the Main Street Inn in Crandon, Wisconsin, it’s close to midnight and Cas is reaching new heights of grouchiness.

“Look, Cas, it was the only place for an hour in any direction,” Dean explains with a weary sigh. “I’m sorry it wasn’t gourmet rabbit food, but sometimes you gotta eat what you gotta eat.”

“There were onions,” Cas grumbles. “I do not like onions.”

“Yeah, well, next time ask to leave ‘em out.” Dean struggles with the key in a jiggly lock, finally shoves open the flimsy plywood door, and takes a moment to be grateful for the distinct aromas of industrial-strength detergent and Pine Sol. His feet scuff on the rough carpet, and he drops his bag on the foot of a bed before he even bothers finding a light switch.

Cas finds it first, casting a yellowish glow over a cozy, old-fashioned room. There’s framed Bob Ross-style paintings on the walls, a table and dresser that have seen better days, and—

One bed.

Dean blinks stupidly at the furniture, hoping he’s just doing the opposite of seeing double.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, Cas?”

“Why is there only one bed?”

Dean rounds on him, temper spiking. “I don’t know, Cas, I didn’t make the booking.”

Cas presses his lips into a tight line and pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I swear I selected the right option—”

“Forget it,” Dean says with a wave of his hand. “I’m beat. We’ll deal with it in the morning.” With that, Dean makes a beeline to the bathroom, urgently needing a shit, a shower, and some privacy.

Who’d have thought being stuck in the car for twelve hours with the object of your unrequited affections would be such a drag?

Dean takes one look at his own hang-dog face in the mirror and feels like punching something.

When he gets out of the shower, Dean realizes he has a dilemma. He didn’t think to get any clean clothes, and now that he’s all freshly scrubbed, he doesn’t relish the idea of putting his sweaty T-shirt and grimy jeans back on. But the other option is to slink out of the room in a towel, grab his pj’s, and slink back with his tail tucked between his legs.

Whatever. At least he’s too tired to pop a boner right now.

He wraps the scratchy towel as tight as he can and keeps a death grip on it as he opens the door.

Cas is perched on the foot of the bed with the remote in his hand, trying to figure out how the TV works. Dean’s going to have to pass very close to his knees to get to the duffel bag.

Cas looks up sharply when Dean comes out of the bathroom, and his gaze sticks.

“Sorry,” Dean mutters, shuffling past him as quick as he can. “Forgot clothes.”

“It’s—” Cas clears his throat. “Fine. May I borrow some pajamas?”

His voice sounds weirdly tight, strained, and Dean hopes they’re not about to fight about propriety. He just can’t with that right now. “Yeah, help yourself,” he says, opening up the duffel and starting to turf out clothes onto the bed. He’s looking for his gym shorts and a specific AC/DC shirt that’s all threadbare and soft, but he comes up instead with a maroon hoodie he only faintly recognizes.

He only gets a second to examine it before Cas is grabbing it out of his hands. “I’ve been looking for that.”

Dean spreads his suddenly empty hands. “Must've shoved it in here after the last hunt. Been too hot for a hoodie, anyway.”

“It won’t be for long,” Cas says simply, then grabs some other clothes and shuffles off to the bathroom.

Well, then.

As soon as Dean hears the water running, he dares to drop his towel and get into his shorts. Then he examines his sleeping options.

Wouldn’t be the first time he’s slept on the floor, but this room is more cramped than their usual fare, and he’d be hard-pressed to even find enough floor space to stretch out coffin-style. There’s a chair—straight-backed and hard-armed, with the kind of upholstery that looks soft and squishy but has all the give of a granite cliff. 

And then there’s a single queen-sized bed. Pretty cozy for two six-foot dudes.

No, that’s not on the table. 

He could sleep on the table.

No, what the fuck. Must be more tired than he thought.

Well, for the moment, Dean scoops up the remote from where Cas was messing with it and pokes at some buttons until he stumbles across a rerun of M*A*S*H. With a heavy sigh, he flops back on the bed next to the pile of clothes, still sans T-shirt. Whatever. He’s got until Cas gets out of the shower to finish getting dressed and relocate to the chair. He can lie here for a few moments.

This duvet is soft.

Hawkeye's kinda handsome, in an angular sorta way.

Cas sure is taking a long time in the shower.

Dean is startled awake by the door opening. Cas is a blur to his half-asleep eyes as he putters around, turning off the TV and plugging in both their phones, but Dean eventually blinks enough to notice that Cas is wearing flannel pj bottoms the AC/DC shirt he’d been looking for.

Looks good on him. Loose, soft. Snuggle-able.

Then it registers that Cas is settling down in the chair with an extra blanket from the dresser.

“Wait—” Dean croaks. “Nah, man, you—you should take the bed.” He’s sure the effect is ruined when his jaw cracks open on a yawn before he can finish the sentence.

“Go to sleep, Dean,” Cas murmurs, flicking the light off. “You’re clearly comfortable.”

“Yeah, but that chair isn’t,” Dean protests in the sudden blue-tinged darkness, even as he scoots up the bed until his head finds the pillows.

“No less so for me than for you,” Cas says. “Goodnight.”

Dean sighs and squirms his way under the duvet. The sheets are just as soft, the pillow is like a cloud, and he can already feel sleep clawing at his brain again.

“Night, Cas.”

~~

Dean’s dreams are mild, and every so often he halfway-surfaces to the sound of the chair squeaking and Cas’s little frustrated huffs of breath. Then, in the interminable wee hours where no one is certain whether it’s night or morning, he awakens more fully to the other side of the mattress dipping under a weight. “Hmrph?” he mutters.

“Go back to sleep, and don’t say anything,” Cas grumbles as he settles in. 

“Mmkay,” Dean mutters, already sinking into his dreams again.

“That chair is torture.”

Dean snakes an arm out of the duvet to pat blindly at Cas's shoulder, then flops it on the pillow over his head. 

Something tugs on his mind, something demanding that he pay attention to these very important developments, but he’s too tired. He has exactly one big sleepy inhale and exhale to appreciate the scent and shape of Cas up close and personal before the current tows him under again into sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean’s alarm goes off too early. He windmills his way out of bed before he’s fully awake, stumbles around for his phone, scrubbing sleep from his eyes with the knuckles of his hand. Where's the damn—there it is. He silences his alarm, then stares at it, trying to force the text notification into focus.

**SAM: Emailed you what I found. Don’t do anything stupid. Call if you need backup.**

Dean snorts. “Yes, Mom,” he says to an empty room.

Empty.

Cas is gone.

Dean forces a deep breath. “He’s a grown-ass man, Winchester,” he says to himself, then sits down on the bed to paw through Sam’s links and pictures of old documents.

The bed he’d shared with Cas last night.

That thought clears the last of the cobwebs from Dean’s brain, and he glances furtively over his shoulder at the other side of the bed. The pillow’s twisted into a shape like a banana, like Cas had it shoved down under his neck. The duvet is thrown back, and the sheets are all crinkled into a silhouette that suggests to Dean’s curious eye that Cas sleeps curled up on his side.

That mental picture melts sweetly in his mouth. He’s so damn cute. Dean’s kinda sad he missed it.

Not that Cas would appreciate being watched, probably.

Dean should do it once anyway. Just to show him. It’d serve him right.

It’s at that moment that the door opens and Cas comes in juggling a grease-spotted paper bag, a cardboard tray containing two coffee cups, and a fat newspaper. Dean startles to his feet, trying not to look guilty. He has nothing to be guilty for. “Hey,” he says. 

“Good morning,” Cas says. 

“Here, let me—” Dean then tries to shove his phone in his pocket so he can lend a hand, only to realize that his gym shorts don’t have pockets. It falls to the floor with a thunk, and by the time he picks it up, Cas is already setting things down. “Uh. I guess you got that.”

That gets Cas grinning, and even though he turns away to try and hide it, Dean sees it anyway. He’s wearing that soft maroon hoodie halfway-zipped over one of Dean’s other favorite T-shirts and those second-hand jeans. Dean tries not to think about whose boxers he might be wearing. “I brought breakfast,” Cas says, pointing to the bag.

“You’re a saint. Lemme brush my teeth.”

He does that while Cas pulls out the coffee cups and two styrofoam boxes, arranging them on the table by the window. Across the street, they have a picturesque view of a tiny lake and the aspen trees just starting to turn golden at their tips. Dean finds a T-shirt and sits down with a plastic fork and knife.

His nose informs him of what’s in the box before he opens it, but he still waits until he’s peeled open the lid, damp with condensation, and finds a steaming pile of—

“French toast?” he dares to ask with shy a grin. There’s even bacon.

And he could swear that’s a blush on Cas’s cheeks when he nods. “There’s fruit, too,” he says, holding a large cup of what looks like cut-up cantaloupe, grapes, and strawberries. “I encourage you to add some variety to your diet.”

Dean wants to kiss him.

Not just any old want. It’s a hard, sharp yearning, like a hook caught in his lips reeling him in, and he has to firmly will his ass to stay in the seat. Still, he grins his thanks and digs in, pouring maple syrup over everything, bacon included, and bending the plastic fork out of shape in his enthusiasm. He even has some fruit salad.

“Oh,” Cas says around a bite of his omelette. “I spoke with the waitress at the diner about the disappearances.”

“Yeah? What’d she say?”

Cas swallows before continuing. “There have been two additional missing people besides the ones that made the news, local townspeople who’ve been going up there to fish for years. One of them did make his way back, and there are rumors that he’s claiming to have been abducted by aliens.”

“Aliens?” Dean’s eyebrows do an incredulous dance.

Cas nods. “He described them as tall and pale, skeletal, with long limbs and claws.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, aliens, sure. Sounds like Sam's wendigo theory’s on the money.” Then his brain catches up. “Wait, _ them? _”

“Apparently.”

A chill spreads through Dean’s belly. “Wendigos are generally solitary.”

Cas dips his head to the side, considering. “Human memory is notoriously fallible. Especially after trauma.”

Dean chews on that, then cuts another bite of eggy toast. “Did you happen to get the guy’s name?”

“Aaron Cauffield. He’s taken leave off work, so he should be home today.”

In spite of the new developments, Dean feels a glow in his chest. “Look at you, doin’ huntery things,” he says with a grin. “And you thought you weren’t up to this.”

Cas ducks his chin. “Just trying to be useful,” he mutters.

“Hey,” Dean says, leaning across the table to lay one hand on Cas’s forearm. “You are. Promise.” He keeps his hand on Cas’s arm until blue eyes pull up to meet his own. Lets the moment sink in, then scoops up his empty styrofoam clamshell and folds it into the trash. “Now let’s make sure we got flare guns and track down this Aaron Cauffield. The more we know going into this, the better.”

~~

By late morning, they’ve tracked down the survivor in question and suited up all official-looking to pay him a visit. Dean takes a back seat in questioning, providing names and a reason for their presence and then letting Cas take the reins. He’s remarkably gentle, a far cry from his “bad cop” routine. Aaron is cagey at first, but once he realizes he’s going to be taken seriously, he launches into a detailed—if inaccurate—story that confirms a lot of what they’ve guessed and points them in the right direction for their next move.

As they leave the house, Dean claps a hand on Cas’s shoulder. Or at least, that’s what he intends to do. Somehow it ends up on the other side, slung across his back. Oops?

“You did good back there,” he says anyway, and is rewarded with Cas’s ears going pink and a shy smile ticking up his lips. 

“I find that,” Cas starts, then stops and swallows. “Lately, I’ve developed a certain… awareness of feelings that I wasn’t privy to before.”

Dean freezes with his hand still on Cas’s shoulder, heart hammering. They’ve reached the Impala’s passenger-side door, but he’s unwilling to put the distance of the car between them yet. “Yeah?” is all he can say as he slowly reclaims his hand. His old fed suit feels remarkably good on Cas’s muscular frame.

Cas ducks his head in a nod. “It’s—unreliable and confusing. But useful.”

“Yeah, that’s emotions for ya.” It comes out breathier than intended, but Cas doesn’t seem to notice.

Cas is looking at him with an unreadable expression, and the early autumn sunshine practically makes his eyes glow. For half a second, Dean’s reminded of when they _ did _ glow with grace and power. But now—now it’s just the sun.

Dean licks his lips.

Cas’s eyes drop down. That flush comes back to his cheeks and ears, and his own mouth drops open just a fraction, just enough that Dean can see the wet shine on the inside. It beckons, the yearning clawing at Dean again to just swoop in and— 

Dean sucks in a breath, and almost runs into the fender in his haste to get around to the other side of the car. “So,” he says. “Two wendigos, eh?”

Cas blinks slowly and clears his throat before responding. “Yes. Two wendigos. Do you think it’s time to call Sam?”

Dean considers for a second. Wendigos are tough enough to kill on their own, but today has been so good with Cas, and he doesn’t want anything getting in the way of that. Besides, Cas is tough.

“Nah,” he says. “Me ‘n’ Sam were still greenhorns when we took on our first wendigo. We can handle ‘em.” He pulls open the car door, and they slide in in unison. Cas is still watching him closely, and Dean feels laser-pierced, like Cas is scanning him down to the cellular level. He fidgets, fumbles his keys, has to bend down to pick them up and honks the Impala’s horn with his shoulder. “Son of a—”

“Are you alright?” Cas asks.

“Yep, fine. No problem.”

Just the fact that the guy he has the hots for can probably see right through him.

“Let’s find a hardware store and see if we can jury-rig some flamethrowers.”

~~

Kentuck Lake is about a forty-five-minute drive north into the woods. The next morning, toting flare guns and two untested fire-spitters, which “Should work, Cas; I saw this on YouTube,” they strike out in the rosy sunrise. They drive up through the quiet little town, past old brick buildings and through what passes for a downtown—two bars, a Subway where Dean stops and grabs their lunch and dinner, a bank, and a couple of shops trying to be trendy—out to where the houses taper off and the carefully marked yards and fields turn into open meadows, delineated by stands of oak, aspen, birch, and maple. Dean keeps the music quiet; he watches Cas almost as much as he watches the road. He stares out the open window with wide eyes as the harvest-dry grasses and just-turning leaves fly by. The wind smells crisp and cool with the first chill of autumn, and Dean’s heart feels as light as air. He takes the road a little slower than he needs to, not super eager to let go of this moment. A few trucks pass him noisily on the two-lane road; for once, he just smiles as they roar on by. 

They pass small flowage lakes and grassy meadows. Cas tries to point out a moose in the distance, but it’s gone before Dean can catch a glimpse. More evergreens mix into the tree stands, marbling dark green through the gold and red, shot through with stark white birch trunks. Above them, the sky is a dome of cornflower and indigo, vaulted and endless. Dean tries not to make stupid comparisons to Cas’s eyes, but when he glances over at him and they sparkle just the same, it makes it difficult.

That maroon hoodie looks good on him. It makes him look softer—younger—than the trenchcoat ever did, more like his own self than his secondhand flannels. It occurs to Dean that he doesn’t really have many of his own clothes. Mostly he’s been living out of Dean or Sam’s castoffs. When this is over, Dean resolves to take him shopping somewhere besides army surplus or Goodwill. Get the guy something new for a change. He deserves it.

It’s hard to believe they’re out here to kill a couple of man-eating monsters. Dean tries to get his head back in the game; he can’t afford to be distracted like this on the hunt. It could cost lives. Cas’s, in particular.

Shit, Cas could die.

That thought pops the balloon in his chest like a needle. Shit, maybe he should have called Sam. Maybe they should have waited. If Cas dies at the hands of a wendigo because Dean was too selfish to share, he’ll never forgive himself.

Too late now, though. They’re almost to Kentuck Lake Campground. He sucks in a deep breath. “Okay. So, the plan.”

“Yes.” Cas turns more fully toward him, frowning with the gravity of the situation.

Dean clears his throat. “We got plenty of day left, so we’ll take a look around, look for any game trails that’ll take us deeper into the woods. If we find a likely trail, we'll follow it until we strike gold or run out of daylight, whichever comes first. If we have to, we’ll camp out there.”

“Stay the night? In the woods?”

Dean shrugs. “No sense making this drive twice. Besides,” he says with half a grin, “We make good bait.”

Cas takes a second to process, and then, “That seems very dangerous.”

“Yeah, well. Better they attack us when we’re prepared for it than haul off another tourist. Besides, I got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“You mean besides the toy flamethrower?”

Dean holds up a finger. “Hey, just because we made 'em out of Super Soakers doesn't mean they're toys. Just you wait. Those things pack a punch.”

“You know, because you saw it on YouTube?” Cas asks with a glint in his eye. 

"Hey, shuddup." Dean tries to keep the grin off his face, but it's hard. And, ultimately, not worth the effort. 

Cas smiles back silently for a moment, then turns to watch out the window again. “Just seems a shame when we have a perfectly good bed back at the motel.”

Dean’s face goes red-poker hot, and he cannot come up with a single dignified response.

~~

There is a game trail, and after almost an hour of hiking up its winding length, they come across a rough clearing under the boughs of a grand fir. Dean finds a scramble of leaves that suggests a human struggle, and then Cas spies a scrap of cloth and blood in the broken underbrush. 

“Looks likely,” Dean says, hitching the duffel bag higher on his shoulder. “This is a good place to camp. If we don’t find anything by sundown, we’ll come back here to set up for the night.”

Cas nods absently, staring around at the clearing. The wind rattles and sighs in the canopy, and Cas squints up into the fall of leaves. One lands on his shoulder, and he blinks as he plucks it off his hoodie.

“Hey,” Dean says. “That’s good luck.”

Cas twirls the leaf in his fingers. “Fortuitous,” he says.

~~

At the end of a long, fruitless day, they end up back in the clearing, bedding down on a tarp in their jackets under the swaying trees. Dean’s frustrated and exhausted, but the constant low thrum of adrenaline and associated hypervigilance is making it difficult to drift off, despite the itch in his eyes. He wishes he could have remembered the Anasazi symbols he’d used for protection last time, but it’s been a long time since he carried Dad’s journal everywhere, and even his damn-near-photographic memory has an expiration date. Cas had thrown up some basic Enochian protection symbols, but neither of them have any idea if they’ll even work against a creature like this.

Dean huffs and wraps his jacket tighter around himself; it’s only a couple of hours until it’s his turn on watch. He needs to sleep. Instead, he keeps his right hand on a flare gun next to his makeshift pillow, his flamethrower close by, and tries not to make monsters out of every shadow within the shadows, every flutter of a wing or skitter in the dry brush. 

At his back, Cas is a solid warmth, sitting up stiff and alert. Any other time, Dean would be thrilled to be this close to him, but now, for once, his heart has other reasons to be beating like a marching drum against his ribs.

Finally, the silence is too much to take. He elbows Cas in the back, gently, so as not to startle him. “You awake back there?” His whisper sounds shockingly loud in the darkness.

He feels Cas huff before he answers. “Are you?”

Dean snorts. “Funny man,” he says.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Cas whispers.

“Yeah, well. Fat chance of that,” Dean says, snuggling down harder into their tarp. For a second, he wishes for the paltry shelter of a tent, but he knows it would be a false sense of security. Still. It’d be something.

There’s more silence. Even the crickets have gone to bed.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“I, um. I wanted to apologize. For the way I’ve been acting lately.”

Dean stares at the vague outline of him in the darkness. “You sure you want to have this conversation _ now _?”

“I—yes. Just in case—”

“We’re not gonna die, Cas. Neither of us.”

“I know. But. I’m sorry. It’s been—a difficult adjustment, and there have been times I haven’t been fair to you.”

Dean chews on his lips for a moment, weighing his responses. “You know I just want to help, right?”

This gets him a frustrated sigh, of all things. “Yes, I know that. But—”

“Shh, wait.”

There’s something moving. Something large. Dean’s eyes strain into the black to pick up any glint of starlight, moonlight, anything. A long, knife-edge moment of waiting and then—

“_ There _!”

A shot from his flare gun goes wide and dazzles his eyes, but he gets a single clear glimpse of two gaunt, naked forms galloping toward them through the woods. They cringe away from the light of the flare but ultimately stay their course.

A second shot flies over Dean’s shoulder, a bright white streak fading to a green afterimage. He hears a scream and a thump, a sizzle of flesh, sees a smouldering shape like a chest and arms as it drops to the ground. Dean takes a few staggering steps away until his back hits the tree trunk, then tosses his now-useless flare gun and struggles to light his flamethrower. He’s the furthest thing from a praying man, but he still sends up a thanks to whoever might be listening when it ignites.

“Cas, get back!” he barks. In the flickering glow of the small flame, he watches Cas make a beeline for the other end of the clearing. One wendigo is down, but not for the count, with a crackling black burn; the other is crouched over it protectively. It snarls at the light, rancid teeth gnashing.

Dean wastes no time. He pumps the pump action and pulls the trigger.

The crouching one charges.

Dean sprays it with a gout of yellow-red flame.

Both creatures shriek, one in pain and one in anger, as Dean’s target crisps and ignites. It staggers back, but the other one has recovered and is pinwheeling wildly toward Dean, shoving its partner to the ground before launching at Dean with its claws.

Dean ducks. The claws strike the tree at his back and knock off a chunk of bark. Dean turns to fire, but his candle has gone out. He curses and runs blindly into the darkness, the wendigo’s footsteps and wild cries hot on his heels.

“Dean, I can’t get it lit—” It’s Cas’s voice from the side. He sounds panicked. Cold dread seeps through the adrenaline in Dean’s veins.

“Don’t panic!” he shouts, even though he knows that that’s the opposite of useful. He tries to course-correct his headlong run, not sure exactly where the edge of the clearing is and trying to veer in Cas’s direction, but it proves to be a very wrong move. A solid, sharp-edged weight hits his back; he feels the scrape of claws against the back of his neck. Only a lifetime of quick reflexes saves him from a swift and untimely bloodletting.

“_ Dean!” _ Cas cries out. Dean is trying to roll out from under the wendigo, but the bony limbs have him caught tight. Putrid breath makes his stomach heave. Teeth snarl at his ear, and Dean’s struggling for his belt knife, a rock, _ anything _, when he hears heavy footfalls, then a bodily impact, and the weight on his back rocks off to the side. 

Though its legs stay locked around Dean’s waist, Cas's wild charge distracts the wendigo enough that Dean gets his arms back. He finally gets a handle on his knife and digs it deep into whatever bit of wendigo flesh he can find. It won’t do much, but it might get him some freedom.

Hallelujah, it works. The thing scrambles off his back with an angry growl, and Dean gets to his feet, ready to spit blood. Blessedly, he finds his flamethrower in the brush not far away, and he has his lighter in hand before he can think too hard about where Cas is, whether Cas is alive or dead—

He fires.

By the light of the blaze, he sees the wendigo crouched over a human form—_ Cas, no, God, fuck no— _it crisps and sizzles under his continuous stream of flame, flailing its arms in pain. With a scream, it rears back, its face like a Salvidor Dali painting, and then charges wildly off into the underbrush.

Dean doesn’t know if it’s going to die or not. He also can’t see the other one, so it’s probably off licking its wounds somewhere, also unfortunately alive.

But these thoughts are distant, tangential to the way Cas isn’t moving.

Dean falls to his knees by Cas—Cas, still Cas, not _ the body _ , not _ Cas’s body _ , still _ Cas _, dammit—pulls out his flashlight and checks him over with shaking hands. “Fuck, please, no, fuck—”

He’s bleeding from three deep gashes on his shoulder, and Dean has the wild thought that his beloved red hoodie is ruined, but when Dean pries open an eyelid and shines the flashlight, he winces away from the beam. Dean’s relief is so powerful it’s like an out of body experience. “Thank fucking Christ,” he mutters. “Can you move?”

Cas just mumbles. Dean cups his head in one hand, tenderly, checking his skull for bruising. Cas hisses in pain. “Might have a concussion,” Dean concludes. “C’mon, let’s get you—”

“I can do it,” Cas growls.

“Now is not the time to be a stubborn asshole, asshole,” Dean snaps back and hauls him to his feet whether he likes it or not.

Cas gasps sharply through his nose and nearly collapses in Dean’s arms.

It’s going to be a long walk back to the car.

~~

“Ow.”

“Hold still.”

“It hurts.”

“I know, but I gotta stitch it up.”

“Give me that—”

“What? Hey, no, Cas, I’m not letting you—”

“It’s _ my _ shoulder.”

“Exactly. I can see what I’m doing. You can’t.”

Cas sits heavier on the toilet lid, grimacing in pain when Dean whips the needle through his flesh with quick, practiced motions. Their disposable syringes of local anesthetic can only do so much; he'd used almost all of the ones they had on hand. The gashes are long, but shallow, and widely spaced. So that’s one thing going for them.

“Just a couple more,” he murmurs.

“Don’t coddle me,” Cas growls, red in the face and breathing hard through his nose.

“Alright, fine, you’re gonna get gangrene and die,” Dean snaps.

“That’s not funny.”

“Yeah, well, sue me.” A few more sweeps of the needle, a few more grunts and gasps from Cas, and Dean snips the floss. “Alright. Hard part’s over. Antiseptic and a bandage and you’ll be good to go.”

Cas doesn’t say anything. He’s staring blankly into a dusty corner, lips pressed tight and still not breathing quite right. It rings an alarm bell in Dean’s brain.

“You okay?” Dean asks.

“Of course I’m not fucking okay—_ ah_.” Cas twinges away from the pain in his injured shoulder. Dean lets him ride it out, pulling off his gloves, washing his hands, and fishing for the antiseptic spray.

Once Dean finishes taping the gauze in place, Cas droops back against the toilet tank, chin to his chest. Dean’s still a little worried about a concussion, so he pats him awake—hand veering at the last instant toward his good shoulder instead of stroking over his hair. “Hey. No sleeping yet.”

“I’ve dug bullets out of my own flesh, Dean,” he says, and his voice shakes. “I’ve killed two demons with one blow. And now I—” He breaks off, and when Dean catches a glimpse of his eyes, he sees angry tears trembling on his lashes.

Dean’s heart gives a swift kick. He should have expected this. “Hey, man, it’s okay. You did good.”

Cas scoffs.

“I’m serious. You saved my life.”

“And what did that get me? Nearly bleeding out myself on the forest floor.”

_ Ouch. _ “Well, _ I _sure as hell appreciate it. Look, this is just part of the job—”

“I’m _ weak!” _ Cas suddenly yells. “I’m _ useless! _Without my powers, I’m a liability and you shouldn't be bothering with me.” He shoves himself up off the toilet, charging past Dean’s shoulders and out into the bedroom.

“Hey, me ‘n’ Sam have never had superpowers," Dean points out as he hauls himself to his feet and follows. "And look at what we get ourselves into.”

“You’ve been training for this since you were children.”

“So? You’re a strategist and a soldier. Just because you don’t have your grace—”

“I panicked, Dean. I nearly got both of us killed because I couldn’t light my fucking flamethrower. You were lying on the ground bleeding, and the best thing I could think to do was to _ run _ at the thing, and now I’m—” he indicates his shoulder, and the tears roll fat down his cheeks. He scrubs at them angrily.

“That’s a hell of a lot more than most would do. Do you know the kind of guts it takes to do what we did tonight? Angel or human, you’re—”

“I don’t want your pity, Dean.”

“Pity? You think that’s what this is about?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Hell no!”

“Then what? Why am I here? Why did you take me in? Why did you bring me on this hunt? Why are you even wasting—”

“Why do you think, huh? You gave up everything for us!” 

“For you.” Cas pushes closer and stabs a hard finger into Dean's chest. “Let's not mince words. I did it for you.”

“Exactly!” 

“So I'm a burden. An obligation.”

“No, Cas—” 

“Screw you.” Cas turns his back on Dean, scooping up a clean flannel and his ruined red hoodie. He tries to put the flannel on but doubles over in pain when he tries to lift his arm, stumbling into the bed, breathing hard.

Dean gives him a moment. Then asks, “You done?” 

Cas snarls. “Whoever invented pain deserves to be tortured to death.” 

“Oh, so you're mad at God now?” 

Cas says nothing. Just scowls as dark as a Kansas thunderstorm and sinks down to sit on the bed. Dean stays where he is, waiting him out. Starts to pack away the first aid supplies—everything except antibiotics and the extra-good painkillers, which Cas is definitely going to need—just so he stops watching Cas like a creeper. 

When he's finished, Cas is still sitting there, staring into nothingness with the torn, crumpled ball of his hoodie held in his hands. Carefully, cautiously, Dean sits down next to him. 

After a long moment, Cas starts to unwind the ball of red fabric. “Guess I'll be needing a new hoodie,” he says. His tone is flat, deliberately emotionless. 

“I was thinking,” Dean starts, then has to clear his throat. His tongue feels too large in his mouth. “We should take you shopping for some new stuff. Like, actually new stuff, stuff of your own. If you'll let me.” 

Cas sighs and curls in on himself a little tighter. “This is what I was trying to say earlier—” 

“Hey, man, I get it. You don't want to feel helpless, and you're not. It's just.” Dean swallows. “Being human isn't all bad. And I want to share that stuff with you. The good stuff. Maybe balance out some of the garbage.

It's the closest thing to the truth he's ever spoken, and he can feel the capsaicin sting of it on his lips.

When he dares to look, Cas is watching him with those endless cornflower-indigo eyes. Dean sucks in a deep breath and fixes his gaze on one of the paintings on the wall. 

“Do you remember the time,” he starts. “Back—way back during the apocalypse. When Zachariah yanked me forward to 2014?”

Cas nods once, saying nothing.

“I never told you much about the you I met there.” Hell of a time to realize he's got a hangnail. Dean picks at it, idly fidgety. “He was—you were human. But you were—bitter and, and desperate. You just—it was like you gave up.” Breathe, Dean. He has to remind himself. “That version of Dean clearly failed you, and I swore. I swore if anything like that ever happened to you in my timeline, I would do better. I wouldn't let you fall that far.” 

Cas regards him for a long moment with a deep, inscrutable stare. “Interesting choice of words,” he says at last. 

Dean chuckles once, brief and absurd. 

“So. Anyway. That's why I've been—doing what I've been doing, you know? Trying to show you the good things in life that make all the bullshit worthwhile. But that's not pity, Cas, and it's not you being a burden, it's—” 

He stops. 

Bites his tongue. 

Can't look at Cas.

“People take care of each other,” he finally finishes. “Y'know? I'm here for you. Whatever you want. Or don't want. You want me to leave you alone, I—I'll do that.” He really should know better than to make promises he can't keep. “You want a new hoodie, we'll get you a new hoodie. You want to fix that one, we’ll fix it. You want ice cream, we'll get ice cream.” 

Cas laughs, or maybe sighs, a dry exhalation. “I don't know what I want. Or, no, that’s—I do, but.” He looks down at his knees again, ears reddening. “It's not possible.” 

Dean casts his brain around for a second, trying to decipher that. “You want to go get your grace back? Be an angel again? We can try.” 

Cas scoffs. “My grace is gone. Burned up, you know that.” 

“What I'm trying to say is, I'm here for you. You don't have to know what you want right now, just. Whatever. I'm here.” 

Cas stares at him again, and this time Dean dares to hold his gaze. 

Finally, he takes a big breath in. It sounds like a first. “Thank you, Dean,” he says.

“Any time.”

There’s a long, still stretch of silence, the kind of silence you only get past the witching hour. As it stretches paper-thin, Cas sits up a little straighter and clears his throat, flicking some dried blood off the torn edge of the hoodie. Dean doesn't even tell him to stop being gross. Not until he takes the hoodie by the shoulders and shakes it out. 

“Dude—” 

“Maybe I could learn to sew,” Cas says. 

Dean doesn't know if laughter is the appropriate response or not, but it's what he does. 

“C’mon,” he says when he can control his guffaws and has stopped staring at the tiny answering grin on Cas’s face, glowing like a tiny moon. “Painkillers, antibiotics, and then let's try and get some shut-eye while it's still dark.” 

There is no discussion of sleeping arrangements that night. Dean is cozy under the blankets when Cas comes out from brushing his teeth, and he just crawls right in on the other side under the cover of darkness. Exhausted as he is, Dean stays awake long enough to soak up his warmth under the duvet and listen to the noises his breathing makes. He breathes in the scent of Cas, mostly toothpaste and antiseptic, but still. After a few moments of lying in the dark, he scoots a little closer, wriggling until his knee nudges Cas's thigh, thrilling when Cas doesn't pull away. 

“Sweet dreams, Cas,” he whispers.

And Cas whispers back, “You too, Dean.” 

~~

“Dean.”

It has definitely not been enough hours since Dean passed out, but a large hand is shaking his shoulder, and a very inconsiderate light stabs his eyeballs when he opens them halfway. With a grunt and a grimace, he pulls the blanket over his face. 

“Dean,” Cas says again, still shaking him. “Dean, I've thought of something.” 

“What?” Dean groans. 

“What if they're a mating pair?” 

Gears grind in Dean's brain. “What?” he says again with more confusion.

“The wendigos. What if they were a mating pair? Is there such a thing?” 

Right. Wendigos. The hunt. “I dunno, Cas. The hell gave you that idea?” 

“I—the way they reacted when the other got hurt. They protected each other. And, you said wendigos are usually solitary. Why else would these two pair up?” 

“Bridge buddies?” Dean mutters, already dozing back off.

Cas shakes him again, and Dean groans. “Cas, talk to me about it in the morning, okay?”

“It is morning.”

Son of a bitch. Dean tentatively lowers the duvet from his face, squinting into the bleak reality of sunshine on the walls and the clock reading just past seven am.

“Ugh, fine,” he says and throws the blanket back. “Gotta piss.”

Once he’s done that, and brushed his teeth and shaved his stubble, he feels marginally more human. Still needs coffee, though. Now that he’s not distracted by taking care of Cas, he can see three shallow scrapes down the length of his own neck, red and angry. That’s how close he’d gotten, and he’d barely noticed because—

Well. Doesn’t matter now.

When he steps out of the bathroom, Cas is seated at the table by the window, leafing through yesterday’s newspaper. He’s still wearing Dean’s pajama bottoms, and his hair is rucked up in the back from the pillow; they hadn’t bothered trying to get him into a shirt the night before, so Dean has to deal with the sight of his bare chest, shoulders, his trim little stomach rolls, the lines of Enochian tattooed under his ribs. Telling himself it’s only for a second, he lets himself appreciate his tanned skin and lean muscles.

He’s got a mole over his left nipple. Dean knows that now. Great.

“Let me check your shoulder,” he says, a little louder than necessary. “Then I’ll call Sam, and we can see if your ‘married wendigo’ theory holds any water.”


	3. Chapter 3

“I dunno, Dean. Why would wendigos form pair bonds? The only lore I’ve ever seen is that they used to be human, so it’s not like they’d need to reproduce.”

“Hunting in pairs is probably easier than solo. Or maybe they just like the company.”

Dean can hear the clack of Sam’s laptop keys in the background, then a rustle of old papers. “Maybe they’re adapting,” he says, thoughtful. “It’s a lot harder to get that badly lost in the woods these days. Maybe new wendigos are born instead of made.”

“Well if that isn’t a comforting, disgusting thought,” Dean says, sarcasm dripping from his words. Cas shoots him half a smile from where he’s trying to figure out the little in-suite coffee maker. Dean hadn’t even realized he was watching him. He looks a little loopy around the eyes from the painkillers, and after last night’s discussion of the other Cas, the sight of him swallowing down an opiate pill had done Dean’s stomach a funny turn. But this is different. The guy just got his shoulder sliced open; he’s earned the good drugs.

“Or maybe they were a couple when they were human,” Sam’s saying, “and it just carried over.”

“The important thing is whether or not they have a, a nest or a den or anything. Anything that might make them easier to track down.”

Sam hums a thoughtful noise. “Having some trouble up there?”

“No,” Dean barks. “We just—”

“So, you’re saying you need backup?”

Dean’s about to protest, but he stops. “Hold on,” he says to the phone, then holds it to his chest. “Hey, Cas?”

Cas looks up from the coffee maker.

“You think we should bring Sam in for backup?”

Cas’s brow crinkles up. “You’re asking me?”

Dean shrugs. “It’s your shoulder.”

He tries to roll the shoulder in question and blanches at the pain. “It might be a good idea,” he says at last, and it only comes out a little grumbly.

Dean nods, then pulls the phone back up to his ear. “Yeah, come on up, Samantha. We’ll try and save some monsters for you.”

“Hey—”

Dean clicks the ‘end call’ button before he can hear Sam’s rebuke.

Cas has stopped fiddling with the coffee pot, now, and is sort of staring through it. He taps the tip of each of his fingers with his thumb in some sort of mindless rhythm, getting faster, and Dean thinks he knows what’s going through his mind.

“Hey,” he says softly, kneeling in front of Cas and reaching out to still the motions of those fingers. Cas’s eyes snap up to his. “We’ve all been injured, okay? There’s no shame in it. I know you’re thinking it, so just.” He sucks in a breath through his nose, sighs it out. “I want you to try and get this through your head. It’s okay to be hurt. It’s okay to take the time to heal. It’s okay to be mad about it, but it’s part of the job, and it doesn’t last forever.” He feels his cheeks burn, and he is very aware of the fact that he’s still holding Cas’s fingers in his clammy palm, but he can’t quite let go yet. “You just gotta grin and bear it ‘til you get better. Alright?”

At first, Cas doesn’t say anything. Dean fights the urge to drop his gaze away, instead forcing himself to watch Cas try and process what he’s said, watch him really  _ listen _ . 

Finally, he nods. “I make no promises, but. I’ll try.”

Dean gives him a tight nod, then lets go of his hands with an awkward pat and escapes to the other side of the room.

As he digs through the bag for some clothes, Dean's mind swirls with potential energy. The day is wide open before them. It’ll take Sam at least twelve hours to make the drive, and there’s not much they can do for the case that doesn’t involve going back up to the lake. Oh, sure, they could dig through records in the library, or make improvements to their flamethrowers… but… 

He tosses a T-shirt over his bare shoulder and leans on the door jamb to the bathroom, arms crossed, artfully casual. "So," he says. "We got a day to kill. What you wanna do with it?" 

Cas looks up at him, sharp and sudden. Maybe he's just surprised at being asked his opinion twice in ten minutes, and if that's the case, Dean really needs to work on not overrunning the guy. But then his cheeks pink up, and Dean's not sure what to make of that at all. 

He clears his throat, a nervous tic Dean recognizes as one he picked up from Dean himself. "I—maybe. Maybe we could just—do stuff together?" 

Dean's brain stalls out. "What kinda stuff?" 

Cas's cheeks flush. "What you were talking about last night. The good things about being human?" 

Oh boy. Dean can think of a dozen things that fit into that category without even leaving the motel room. "Uh," he says with a frog in his throat. He clears it. "Sure, Cas. Uh. Where you wanna start?" 

And for a second, for just a hot second, Dean thinks he sees Cas's eyes flick down to his shorts. To where Dean's dick is perking up without his permission in the flimsy nylon. And Cas  _ licks his damn lips.  _

Dean's gonna have a heart attack. 

Then Cas's gaze darts back up to his face. "Breakfast?" 

Dean has to forcibly pry his brain out of the gutter. He means pancakes and eggs, dammit, not—yeah. "Yeah, breakfast. Good. Yeah, let's do that." 

~~

First step, though, is getting Cas into a shirt, which is an adventure all on its own. 

“Okay, give me your bad arm first.”

“This is humiliating.”

“When Sam gets here, ask him about the time I had to tie his shoes for him for a month.”

“You’re his brother; I’m sure you tied his shoes for him many times.”

“He was twenty-five.”

That puts a smile on Cas’s face, which makes up for the wincing and grunting involved in getting the shirt over his head. He gets stuck there for a few minutes, and Dean tries very hard not to laugh, but a single snicker escapes, and the sight of Cas glaring at him through the neck hole while the rest of his face is still hidden—well. Dean’s doubled over with giggles in no time.

The great thing is, Cas joins in.

Eventually, they get the shirt in place, leaving Cas flushed and triumphant with his hair all rucked up and messy. It steals Dean’s breath, and he’s still standing very close from where he’d helped with the final pull. God, how he wants to be pulling on his shirt for a different reason, or getting his hands all up in that bedroom hair— 

Get a grip, Winchester.

They make it out of the motel room before Dean’s brain and stomach stage a mutiny for caffeine and sustenance (or before he does something inappropriate), which, frankly, is kind of a miracle. It’s a short walk to the Log Cabin Cafe where Cas had gone the day before; they eat on the patio in the warm, humid September sunshine. Dean gets an omelette with actual vegetables in it, and Cas smiles like he’s done something secret to please him. The waitress congratulates them, and Dean’s too chickenshit to ask what she thinks they have to celebrate.

After breakfast, they stop by the motel so that Dean can grab Cas’s painkillers—just in case—but they don’t stay. They amble up the main road of Crandon instead. The sun is warm, but it’s cool in the shade, and there’s a crisp breeze that smells like drying leaves.

Crandon is small, but it does have a bit of a downtown. They duck into a couple of cute shops, following Cas’s curiosity. There’s an antiques store, where Cas becomes enamoured of an old-fashioned straight-razor kit with shining abalone inlays. It’s modestly priced, and Cas’s fingers look strong and sure around the heavy handle, so Dean doesn’t hesitate before slipping him a wad of cash to buy it. 

“Any idea how to use one of those?” Dean asks at the register. Cas shakes his head. “Me neither. Guess we’ll have to figure it out. Someone on the internet probably knows, right?”

“Do you learn everything from YouTube these days?” Cas asks, amused. Dean just shrugs.

“What can I say, I’m finally getting into the twenty-first century.”

At the next shop, they find clothing in Cas’s size, but it’s mostly overpriced for what it is, and Cas can’t exactly try things on. There is, however, a wide selection of hats, which they plop on each others’ heads in increasing order of silliness. As they work their way from propeller caps to fireman helmets to ladies’ bonnets to an honest-to-god Carmen Miranda cornucopia, Cas’s grin gets wider and wider, his teeth showing and his eyes all crinkly, and Dean’s pretty sure he’s never seen him laugh like that. It strums on his heartstrings until he’s vibrating right up to his teeth, ready to burst.

Then Cas’s gaze lands a pair of cowboy boots and matching ten-gallon. Dean’s giddiness travels downward, a booming bass deep down in his gut. “No,” he says.

“Why not?”

“Just trust me.”

They move on and find a small bistro at which to have lunch. Cas rubs at his chest, right under where Dean knows the bandage is. “You alright?”

“Getting sore,” Cas says. Dean fishes the painkillers out of his pocket, but Cas shakes his head.

“You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

“I don’t want to become reliant,” Cas says.

“Taking a reasonable dose when you’re injured won’t make you reliant,” Dean says, even as he tries to curb his relief. This Cas is different. This situation is different. He leaves the bottle on the table for Cas to do with as he pleases and checks his texts. “Looks like Sam left a few hours ago,” he says. 

“So we still have some time to kill,” Cas says, fiddling with the flaky crust of his pesto chicken roll.

Dean nods, considering. He doesn’t want Cas to overdo it. The bottle of painkillers sits right where he left it. “Tell ya what. Let’s see if this town has a library and look up what we can on wendigo mating pairs.”

Cas nods, then frowns in consideration. “It could be worth looking into the earlier history of missing persons in this town. If any couples have gone missing in the winter…” he trails off, and Dean picks up his thread.

“Then they could have turned into this wendigo pair.”

“If we can find out where they went missing, that could narrow our search.”

Dean can’t help the idiotic grin that stretches over his cheeks. “Great idea, Cas. You look into that; I’ll dig up whatever I can on wendigos to see if there’s precedent.”

The smile that lights up Cas’s face is so earnest, so bright in his eyes, Dean has to look away before he does something truly stupid. He focuses on his phone and eventually manages to find the location of the Crandon Public Library.

“Looks like it’s on the way back to the motel,” he says, not daring to look back up at Cas just yet. “Once we finish up there, we can order a pizza, maybe watch a movie?”

“That sounds perfect, Dean.”

Him and Cas. On their single bed. Sharing a pizza, laughing at whatever stupid movie they can find on the twelve channels the motel TV gets.

Yep. No way this could get awkward.

~~

“Dean, look here.”

“Anton and Marrion Dixie?”

“Listed as missing in January 1937, with their two children, a guide, and a handful of others. The whole party was lost in a blizzard. The bodies of the children were found in an abandoned mining tunnel north of Kentuck Lake with the bones of four adults. The parents’ bodies were never recovered.”

“Bet they couldn’t bring themselves to eat their own children, but everyone else was fair game.”

“Seems likely.”

“Does it say where this mining tunnel is?”

“Not here. But I found an old map of attempted mines in the area. There aren’t many this far west, and only one close to Kentuck Lake.”

“Nice work, Cas.”

“Thank you.”

~~

They’re in luck: one of the channels the motel gets is hosting an all-night Star Wars marathon: original trilogy on loop, and they just happen to catch the tail end of Return of the Jedi before A New Hope starts again.

“I don’t understand,” Cas says while the Ewoks dance and Dean grins in triumph. “You’ve seen these movies countless times, and with streaming services, you can watch them whenever you want.”

“Because they’re on TV, Cas,” Dean tries to explain through his grin. “That makes it better.”

Cas squints at him skeptically, but doesn’t question that point any further. “Besides,” Dean continues, “you’ve never seen them before, and that makes it special.” Dean settles in on ‘his’ side of the bed and gives a firm pat to Cas’s. “Come on. Any pizza requests? Besides no onions?”

Cas sits gingerly on his side of the bed, feet still on the floor. He looks stiff and nervous, and Dean feels a penny drop in his stomach. The bed space between them suddenly seems way too narrow, the air thick and syrupy. Dean’s not sure whether he wants to shift forward or away.

Then Cas opens his mouth, hesitates, then says with great trepidation, “Can we have pineapple on the pizza?”

Dean’s face scrunches up in disgust. “Dude, seriously?”

Cas shrugs with his good shoulder. “I enjoy the contrasting flavors.”

Dean glares at him. “This is just a ploy to get your own pizza, isn’t it?”

“It would simplify things greatly,” Cas says with a perfectly straight face. Dean just rolls his eyes and tries to hide his grin by focusing on his phone. He pulls up the nearest pizza delivery place while Cas toes off his shoes and swings his legs up onto the bed.

The pizza shows up just as Cas is questioning how an alien water snake could have survived living in a trash compactor. Dean decides not to give him shit for the pineapple in favor of expounding on his favorite fan theories.

By the time Luke is climbing into his X-wing to attack the Death Star, they’ve tucked the remains of their pizza into the mini-fridge, and a golden sunset is fading to twilight. Dean thinks about getting up to turn on a lamp, but never does, and the deep blue darkness folds in around them.

At the break between movies, Cas asks for help getting out of his shirt, and Dean regrets changing back into his gym shorts so soon. Dean takes the opportunity to check under his bandage by the light of the commercials—it’s angry, but no more than expected—and then they settle back down. Dean tries his best to ignore Cas’s shirtlessness, but by the time they’re taking down the AT-AT walkers, he realizes that he’s spent more time watching the reflected light on Cas’s chest than the movie, and, well, that’s just his life now.

Just as Han and Leia are bickering about flying into an asteroid field, Cas yawns. Dean’s about to ask if he’s getting bored, but then Cas scoots and leans so that his arm is pressed against Dean’s, and the words dry up in his throat. He freezes, not sure if he should pull away—he doesn’t, because he really doesn’t want to. Cas leans heavily, a hot, solid pressure from Dean’s shoulder to his elbow, and Dean’s so focused on that contact that he almost misses when Cas asks him about the asteroid worm’s breathing mechanisms.

“I don’t know, Cas,” he grumbles, thoroughly distracted. “Sometimes you just gotta go with it.”

Cas is quiet for a long time after that, long enough that Dean almost feels bad. But when he looks over, he catches Cas's gaze just flicking away, suddenly fixed on the screen. Dean stares. He can’t help it. He lets himeslf get lost in the play of light and shadow over the severe lines of Cas’s nose and jaw, his brow, those tempting fucking lips. The way his hair’s still all messed up and the way his chest moves with his breathing—just a little quickened.

It’s been so good today.

There’s pull in Dean’s heart like gravity, and he’s not sure if this is when he falls into the sun, or if he’s just going to orbit endlessly, silently, like a comet. Wonders if he’ll start to melt if he gets too close.

Then Cas glances back over, and Dean lets himself get caught staring. And Cas—Cas stares back. 

They are sitting  _ really _ close.

With the catchlight in Cas’s eyes and a little shine on his lips, barely parted, Dean could kiss him. Just a few inches, and he could kiss him. And right now, in the low light of the TV, Cas doesn’t even look like he’d object.

In fact, he looks like he’s angling his chin just right, maybe leaning closer, and Dean’s breath catches in his throat because this might be— 

The door opens. “Hey—” 

Dean scrambles backwards, heart slamming against his ribs like a gun just went off, overbalancing and ending up on his ass on the far side of the bed. The light flicks on, shattering their intimate little pocket of unreality into a thousand pieces. 

“Am I interrupting something?” It’s Sam’s voice. Sam “Impeccable Timing” Winchester. Of course it fucking is.

“Uh.” Cas sounds gobsmacked. Embarrassed, even. Dean hauls himself to his feet, unable to look in his direction.

“No, Sam. Come on in.” 

When Dean manages to look up at Sam, he’s grinning like he knows  _ exactly _ what he almost walked in on. Dean wants to chuck a pillow at his face.

“This is cozy,” Sam says as he shuts the door.

“I accidentally—it wasn’t on purpose,” Cas stammers. “We could—now that you’re here, we could look into getting a different room.”

Dean’s stomach opens up into a big gaping hole at that thought. Just two nights sharing a bed—completely innocently—and he’s hooked. That thought sets his heart pounding again.

But Sam jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “I figured you guys would be all set up already, so I just grabbed another single. They’re pretty booked up.”

Dean’s relief is so unexpectedly powerful he has to sit down on the rock-hard chair where Cas had tried to sleep the first night. “Great,” he says.

Cas stumbles off the bed with all the grace of a startled Bambi. “Excuse me,” he mutters, and rushes to the bathroom. The door closes with a snick.

Dean takes this opportunity to hurl the pillow at Sam, who catches it deftly. “Hey, what was that for?” he asks.

“Did you come here to hunt or did you come here to be an asshat?”

Sam gives him some impressive eyebrow acrobatics and plops down at the foot of the bed. “Apparently, I came here to watch Star Wars,” he says.

Dean flops back in the chair, watching Leia confess her love for Han right before he’s lowered into the freezing chamber. Which, damn. If that’s not lemon juice on a papercut.

“Hey,” Sam murmurs, suddenly sounding serious. “Be honest with me, okay? Are you guys—”

“No.” Dean’s eyes don’t leave the TV.

“Seriously?”

“No, Sam.”

“But—”

“Shut up.”

Sam shuts up long enough for Leia to start hearing Luke’s cries for help from the underbelly of Cloud City. Cas is still in the bathroom, and Dean wonders if he should be worried about that. Then, “Are you sure, because—”

“How many times do I gotta say it, Sam?”

“But you—”

The bathroom door opens. Cas comes out, and somehow he’s managed to wriggle his way back into a shirt all on his own. The sight leaves Dean feeling strangely forlorn.

“We should talk about the case,” he says.

“But it’s Return of the Jedi,” Dean protests weakly.

Cas sighs like Dean’s being an idiot. Then moves to the other side of the room, tucking himself into the little dining chair by the table where they’d eaten breakfast their first morning. He couldn't get further from Dean without walking out, and that—that hurts. “The quicker we get moving in the morning, the better chance we have of finding the creatures in daylight. The sooner we find them, the less chance more people will die or go missing. And the sooner we can get back to the bunker.”

Dean dares a glance in Cas’s direction, just in time to see his gaze drop to the scratched tabletop under his hands. Dean sighs. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says. “Why don’t you fill Sam in on what you found at the library.”

He starts to talk, slowly, and with Sam’s input, they formulate a plan of action. Dean doesn’t say much; it takes him a long time to get his brain back in gear.

They’d been so close.

~~

Dean lies awake for a long time that night. He’s on his side facing the wall, squeezed close to the edge of the suddenly too-small bed, and hideously aware of Cas's weight and warmth and breathing on the other side. The sagging mattress wants to roll them both toward the middle; it’s like fighting gravity to stay on the edge like this, and that, among other things, is keeping sleep at a distance.

“Dean?”

Cas’s whisper floats over the blankets; Dean tries not to startle. He could pretend to be asleep.

“Wuzzup, Cas?” he murmurs instead.

Cas is quiet for a while, and if it weren’t for the thrum of tension between them, Dean would probably just tell him to go back to sleep. Then he says, “The things we did today. What was…” He pauses, considers his words. “We didn’t do anything of consequence.”

Dean’s stomach tightens, and he breathes deliberately. “Well, yeah. That was kind of the point.”

“And that’s—that’s the good part of being human?”

He sounds skeptical. Dean shrugs in the darkness. “Basically. The best parts are when you’re not really doing anything.”

“Hm.” Cas is quiet, but it’s a thinking kind of quiet.

“Look,” Dean says. “Most of my life has been pretty eventful, right? Not many people can say they’ve literally stopped the apocalypse. Or even killed a ghost.” He swallows. It’s easier to say this in the dark, but he still has to talk around the rock in his throat. “But that’s not the good part. That part sucks. It’s painful and stressful and you could die at any moment. So. I’ve learned to appreciate the little stuff. The moments in between where it’s just you and the road and the music. That’s—that’s the good part.”

He hears—feels—Cas shift under the covers, rolling to face him. His face is a landscape of shadows, his outline sharp, but his details indistinct.

After another long moment, Cas opens his mouth. “I have a rather embarrassing request,” he says on a quiet breath.

That certainly piques Dean’s curiosity. He rolls too, so they’re facing each other across the chasm of the bed. 

“I’ve never been held,” Cas says.

For a moment, Dean is just stunned. Then he breathes again.

“Not even with—y’know, with April?”

The outline of Cas’s hair shakes no. “Our time together was not particularly affectionate,” he says. “And somewhat tarnished by the fact that she tried to kill me the day after.”

Dean’s not sure what to say to that, so he just lets the moment sink into the darkness.

Cas shifts, nods against the pillow once, sharply. “Goodnight,” he starts to say, rolling away, but Dean catches him by the elbow.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, moving closer.

Without thinking too hard about what he’s doing, he takes Cas in his arms, the whole sweet-smelling, sleep-soft warmth of him. Cas rolls willingly, if a little shy and uncertain, until Dean can feel his heartbeat against his side and the tentative search of his hands as they find places to rest.

They have to be careful of Cas’s shoulder. He ends up on his good side, tucked under Dean’s arm, with his head pillowed on Dean’s chest. Dean flops his arm around a little trying to find a good place for it, and it ends up draped across Cas’s shoulders, palm on the round, fingertips just touching the edge of the medical tape. Cas’s good arm is tucked between their bodies, pressed into the mattress, and the other lands with great care between Dean’s belly and chest, fingertips tapping against Dean’s sternum.

He’s stiff. But then again, so is Dean. He’s hyper-aware of every point of contact, which is—a lot, actually. Really, really a lot. Their legs are held politely separate, but other than that, they are skin to skin from hip to chin. Dean hasn’t ever been this close to Cas, but in the intimacy of darkness, it’s difficult to remember that they don’t  _ do this.  _ That Cas isn’t his to hold like this; this is just. Just human comfort.

Everyone deserves to be held.

Even so, Dean turns his head, and his chin meets Cas’s hair, pillow-fluffed and shower-damp, and he can’t stop himself from nuzzling in with his nose and lips. It’s a selfish pleasure, but he refuses to feel guilty about it. It’s just part of the package. No big deal.

Cas sighs, a small hurricane blowing over Dean’s skin, and then he feels him relax, finally, really relax. Tension bleeds from his bones, and he nestles a little closer. Dean tightens his arm and hopes— 

Just hopes.

“G’night, Cas,” he murmurs.

“Sweet dreams,” Cas whispers back.

Dean doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep like this, with Cas draped over him. The guy’s a furnace, and it’s not actually the most comfortable thing for his shoulder, and that kick of adrenaline just from having Cas in his arms is sure to keep him awake. He assumes he’ll wait for Cas to drop off, then disentangle himself and roll back over to his edge of the bed to get some actual sleep.

He’s wrong.

~~

They shift during the night. Dean has a vague sleep-memory of Cas stretching out on his back, of chasing his heat across the bed, then rolling the other way and Cas following him in turn. When the rosy light of early morning finds them, Dean’s facing the wall again, but this time he has the deeply satisfying weight of a fallen angel pressed up behind him. Cas’s breaths stir the hairs at the back of his neck, close and damp like kisses. Cas’s arm is heavy on Dean’s side, his fingertips tucked under Dean’s waist, palm flat on his belly. He has such nice hands. Large, warm. And the way his knees are tucked perfectly into the backs of Dean’s thighs, hips against his ass—

Oh.

Oh, that’s not just Cas’s hipbones.

All at once, Dean’s wide the fuck awake, and his own morning glory springs to attention in his shorts. He doesn’t dare move a muscle, worried that even the sudden gallop of his heart will be enough to disturb this—whatever this is.

He should wake him up. Or nudge him back over to his side and save them both the embarrassment. Or maybe see if he can squirm out from under his arm and scuttle off to the bathroom to take care of his own problems.

What he should absolutely  _ not _ do, even though he desperately wants to, is push his hips back into the jut of Cas’s cock just to feel it dig into his asscheek. 

Maybe just a little.

Okay, no, seriously, that’s taking advantage of the situation, that’s not okay.

He tries to scootch toward the edge of the bed, but Cas’s arm tightens like a vice, and then Cas is  _ pulling him _ , snuggling against the back of his neck and rolling his hips once, twice, so his dick slides firm and salacious against Dean’s ass, and really, neither of them can be held responsible for that. Dean almost bites the tip of his tongue off trying not to make a sound.

This is how he dies, isn’t it? He’s just going to die of an aneurism in a motel bed because he can feel the shape and length of Cas’s cock and he has to just swallow that knowledge and live with it.

He can think of much better things to swallow right about now. 

That thought turns out to be his death knell, because he can’t keep his giggle from escaping, and as soon as it does, Cas goes tense against his back. “Dean?”

Fuck, what’s he supposed to say now?

“Morning,” he says. Not the worst option.

“Uh,” is apparently all Cas can come up with.

They both lay there frozen for a second, then Cas scrambles back as if he’s been burnt. Dean rolls onto his elbow, shifts his knee so the blankets lift and he can keep his own predicament to himself. “Don’t freak out,” he says. The hysterical mirth is still only a breath away. 

“I’m sorry,” Cas rushes to say. “I. This is inappropriate.”

“Hey, it happens,” Dean says. “It’s not—y’know, it’s just something that happens while you’re asleep. Just bodies being weird. That’s all.” He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince, Cas or himself. 

Cas seems to take that excuse at face value though, because he flops on his back on the pillows with a sigh. “It is particularly persistent in the morning, yes.”

Dean tries desperately not to look at the tent Cas is pitching, but damn, it’s hard.

Difficult.

And also hard.

“Yeah, they don't call it morning wood for nothing,” he mutters.

Cas tilts his head, the familiar gesture turned surreal in this context. “Do people actually use that phrase?” he asks. “I've only seen it in the titles of pornography.” 

Dean chokes on his own saliva.

“You—okay. Who’s been showing you porn?” he asks.

“Nobody. I looked it up myself.”

“You—you went looking for porn.” 

Cas shrugs against the pillows. “I was curious.”

“Oh, were you?” Dean’s brain blinks offline for a few seconds. That’s not a mental image he was prepared to process. Which is why the next thing that pops out of his mouth is, “Find anything interesting?” And instantly, he wants to choke on his own tongue.

Cas is silent for just a beat of surprise, and then, “Lots of things,” he says. “I started with male masturbation videos.”

Yep, here comes that aneurism.

“I wanted to make sure I was doing it correctly,” he elaborates.

“Oh. Yeah. Uh. Yeah, that—that’s important.” And now Dean really should get out of the bed because this is getting absurd. But he can’t, because he is as hard as fucking granite, and Cas is going to see that if he gets up. He risks a glance at Cas, hoping maybe he’s closed his eyes or something that will let Dean escape—but what he actually sees is the little glint in his eye, the quirking corner of his lips.

He’s being fucked with.

Goddammit.

“You fucker,” he says and pulls Cas’s pillow out from under his head to hit him in the face with it. Cas’s low chuckles are like molasses melting down his jittery skin as Cas swings the pillow back at his head.

“One of us should go take a shower,” Cas says.

One million and one dirty thoughts chase each other around Dean’s brain. Shower sex is always more fun in theory than in practice, but this one time, he can’t deny that it’s tempting. “Yeah, probably.”

“You go. I’ll just lie here for a bit.”

Jesus Christ, Dean’s pretty sure his dick is going to explode. He’s leaking on the inside of his gym shorts because he’s pretty sure Cas isn’t just going to be  _ lying here. _

“Dean?”

“Hmm?”

“Shower.”

“Right. Yeah.” Dean forces his legs to move, swinging his feet to the floor and marching as quick as is reasonable toward the bathroom, carefully angled away from Cas’s eyeline. He resolutely ignores his dick for as long as it takes to get to the bathroom door and slam it shut behind him, and then he leans his forehead against the wood of the door and finally,  _ finally _ , reaches down to adjust his dick in his shorts.

Adjust. Sure. We’ll go with that.

He doesn’t even pretend he’s not going to jerk off in the shower. It’s been a few days, and he’s way too keyed up to let it die down on its own. Not the first motel shower wall he’s painted, and it sure as hell won’t be the last.

He shucks his shorts, hops in before the water’s even warm, and leans one arm against the wall to pillow his forehead as he takes himself in hand.

Jesus Christ, Cas watching porn.

Cas jerking it to porn. To  _ male masturbation videos, _ holy fucking hell.

Dean wonders if Cas would like to watch him jerk off. How long he’d be able to last with those eyes on him, wide and dark blue and lust-blown, if he had to watch him lick his lips and touch himself in turn— 

Fuck.

He’s probably doing that right now. Touching himself, right there on the other side of the door. Probably got his hand down  _ Dean’s own flannel pajama pants, _ gripping the dick that Dean had felt against his ass less than five minutes ago. 

Felt good. Felt… hefty.

Jesus. Dean's dick throbs in his hand as he strokes firm and fast, slicking precome over the head with his thumb, reaching down to tug at his balls a little because he doesn’t want to rocket _ straight  _ over the finish line. He widens his legs and reaches his fingers back along his perineum, just enough to poke at his hole, not enough to get inside—lube’s out in the duffel bag, dammit—but just enough to wake himself up, to remind himself how good it feels, to think about Cas's thick length begging for entrance there.

“Shit,” he gasps and gets his hand back on his cock. He’s close. He’s close, and he hopes Cas is too. Wonders if Cas is thinking about him—he knows he's not, but damn, it's nice to fantasize. Wonders if Cas can hear what he’s doing, if it’s helping him get off. Dean wouldn't mind being Cas’s personal porno soundtrack. He conjures up a mental image of Cas opening up the door, slipping behind the shower curtain, tucking up behind him and replacing Dean’s hand with his own, humping against Dean’s naked ass like he had this morning—

When he comes, he bites down on his lips and stays very carefully silent. Just lets his knees shake and dip with white-hot pleasure, the fingers of his other hand clenched in a cracking fist against the shower wall.

When he can breathe again, he slumps into the warm spray, his mind blissfully blank until the endorphins fade.

God damn, he’s in trouble.


	4. Chapter 4

The case goes quickly after that, if not quite how they expect. They find the mining shaft where the wendigos have been hiding out. Two of the recently disappeared victims are alive, scared but still breathing, so Cas takes them on the long hike back to the car while Sam and Dean track down the creatures.

They find them.

They also find the ghosts of the children, which complicates things.

Luckily, the answer to both problems is about the same: Torch the mine.

It goes up like a hydrogen balloon. Sam and Dean run like hell to escape the mine before it collapses, taking the wendigos, the ghosts and their bones, and the flames down with it.

In the end, they are exhausted and a little bit singed, but alive, and the town is safe.

Just another day at the office.

~~

The nicer of the two bars in Crandon is a smoke-free pool hall lit with neon and Christmas lights. Dean juggles three shots in one hand and a beer in the other on the way back to their pool table, dodging rotund, bearded working men and their wives. It’s noisy and crowded in the bar— somebody must be having a birthday or something—but they’ve managed to secure themselves a pool table.

Sam’s lining up his cue when Dean gets back; he gently taps a solid straight into the corner pocket before pinwheeling back to standing. “See, Cas?” he says, just a touch too loud. “It’s all about the  _ right _ force at the  _ right _ time.”

Cas nods along, squinty and fluffed and adorable. Dean licks his lips and focuses on not spilling whiskey all over his hand. “Don’t listen to a word he says, Cas,” he warns as he passes him one of the shots. “Sammy—come get yer poison.”

Sam only wobbles a little as he grabs the shot from Dean. “To a hell of a hunt,” Dean says, raising his shot glass with ceremony.

“To my big brother,” Sam adds, flicking his hair out of his face. “Who can’t build a flamethrower to save his life.”

“Hey, shut up,” Dean scolds.

“To Wisconsin,” Cas adds, nonsensically, “And to, uh—to pool!” His eyes are wide and glassy, his mouth turned down in a confused little frown, and Dean feels a grin stretch irresistibly over his face. They drink, the whiskey going down like sweet water at this point in the night.

“Alright, Cas,” Sam burbles. “Your shot.”

Dean can’t even remember whose balls are whose anymore, which—yeah—that’s hilarious, so he doubles over laughing. Cas glares at him from where he’s bent over the pool table. “What’s so funny?” he asks, suspicious but not cold.

Dean shakes his head. “Nothin’. S’fine. Take your shot.”

Cas blinks. “I just did,” he says, then his frown deepens. “Didn’t I?”

Dean giggles some more.

They take their turns, shooting pool, trading stories, laughing at each others’ mishandled balls—which turns into a persistent joking innuendo. Dean descends into hysterics every time because the other option is letting his face burn and admitting that the swirling giddiness in his gut isn't just alcohol. 

Cas somehow seems to be constantly in his line of sight all night. Leaning on the table while Dean's trying to take a shot, jeans framing his trim hips like wrapping paper that Dean wants to tear into. Or bending down to take a shot himself, sleeves rolled up over his tanned, gorgeous forearms, wobbly and blurred as the night goes on, but always with severe concentration, eyes like blue laser beams. Dean's accustomed to playing drunk, but this—whatever this is—is definitely taking a toll on his game. 

“Dude,” Sam chuckles at him after a particularly egregious missed corner eight ball. “You gonna hit that, or you just gonna play footsie all night?”

“Can it, Sam,” Dean growls. It’s Cas’s turn now, and after careful consideration of the balls— _ grow up, Winchester _ —he leans down over the table right in front of Dean. He hooks his finger over the pool cue, which is a habit Dean really should be trying harder to break him of, but that would mean he couldn’t watch the pool cue sliding rhythmically through the O between his finger and thumb, and he’s not really ready to give that up.

He watches it now as Cas lines up his shot, a tricky one, apparently requiring a lot of repositioning. Dean runs his tongue over dry, tingling lips, cheeks hot and pulse low in his belly as he watches Cas’s hands on the cue, and then— 

Then his gaze slips up to Cas’s face, and all at once he is pinned by blue-steel eyes, hotter than hellfire and stripping the layers right off his soul. Cas’s lips are parted, just—just that much—

Cas takes his shot half-blind, gaze still locked with Dean’s.

Miraculously, it goes in the hole.

Sam whoops, oblivious to whatever just happened and the way it’s made Dean’s palms feel like peach fuzz and his blood whoosh in his ears. “Nice shot, Cas!” Sam crows, clapping Cas on the shoulder and making him jump a little. “At least one of us knows how to handle his balls.”

Dean chokes on his beer.

Once they’ve sunk all their balls twice in a row—and Dean really needs to stop thinking the word ‘balls’—they call it a night, stumbling through the town toward their motel. Sam’s long legs carry him quickly, and he spends the walk drifting ahead, then boomeranging back. Cas’s pace matches Dean’s, and they pinball into each other’s shoulders a few times, half-deliberate, at least on Dean’s part.

Once, he thinks he feels Cas’s fingers try to snag his, but they’re stumbling over cracked pavement and laughing about it before he can be sure.

When they get to the inn, Sam peels off on the lawn and shoots them a lazy salute. “See you kids in the morning,” he says, digging his hands into his coat pockets and ambling off toward his own room.

“Who are you callin’ kids?” Dean hollers after him. Sam pulls one hand out to flip him the bird, not slowing his pace. “That’s rich,” he says to no one in particular.

Then he turns.

He’s alone with Cas.

Cas, who’s watching him with a tipsy-tilted smile and heat in his eyes that sends a shiver down Dean’s spine. He’s drawn closer, like magnets. “C’mon, Cas,” he says, and his voice sounds rough in his own ears as he hooks an arm around Cas’s neck. “Let’s hit the hay.”

They make it to the edge of the lawn, rounding the corner of the building toward their room, before Cas jostles into him. Dean has half a second to worry if the guy's passing out on him before Cas’s jostle starts to feel a little more deliberate. Dean’s back hits the wall. Vinyl siding digs into his shoulder blades, but he only notices in passing. Because Cas—

Cas is very close. His eyes, his lips, the rye on his breath. 

“Dean,” he says, and Dean’s close enough he can hear the click of his throat when he swallows.

“Yeah?”

“I’m about to do something very, very stupid,” Cas says, and Dean’s whole body thrums like a churchbell.

“S’what bein’ human’s all about,” Dean says, licking his lips and really, really hoping he’s right.

“So they tell me,” Cas murmurs, and then he presses in.

Just like that, Dean’s higher brain functions short out. Cas is kissing him. Cas is  _ kissing him _ , and he hopes to hell he’s kissing back, which he probably is, because he’s a creature of instinct right now, and he can’t imagine a world in which he’d do anything else.

Cas’s lips are broad, soft, and cool from the night air. Dean’s still got one arm around Cas’s neck, and he tightens it, slides it down to Cas’s shoulders, hauling him in. He feels a soft  _ whuff _ of breath, feels their lips slip-sliding together. Dean’s other hand drifts up to cup his jaw, the prickle of stubble sending static shocks all the way up his arm. Cas isn’t an expert, but it’s  _ Cas _ , so Dean can’t stop the moan that crawls its way up from his belly.

When Cas breaks away, Dean lets him go only far enough to search his eyes. God, fucking blue, blue eyes with blown-black pupils, a pink flush on his cheekbones. 

The moment stretches between them, humming like a plucked bowstring, Dean’s teeth chattering, and not with cold. Cas’s eyes rove over his face, though what he’s looking for, Dean has no idea.

“Okay?” Dean asks, hoping, praying that the answer is yes.

Cas nods. “You?”

Dean sighs, “Oh yeah,” and leans in to find those lips again. 

“Dean,” Cas groans between kisses, “We should—inside—”

Dean can definitely get behind that. He practically frog marches Cas toward their door, not daring to let him out of arm’s reach, searching his pockets for the room key even as they walk. But it slips from his grip on their welcome mat, and when he stoops to pick it up, Cas’s hand slides up under his shirt and jacket to find bare skin over the lowest part of Dean’s spine. The key skitters away from Dean’s fingers. “Shit—”

Cas steps around him to open the door with his second key; Dean’s barely even standing upright again before he’s being hauled into the room, the door slammed shut, and Cas is on him, pushing him up against the door. Between the booze and this unexpected fervor, Dean’s head is spinning, but there is absolutely no way he’s going to pump the brakes. He gets two big handfuls of Cas’s shirt—one of Dean’s old, soft flannels and a plain black tee, and Dean can feel the heat of his skin through all the softness. When he opens his mouth under Castiel’s, when their tongues meet in a slick, hot slide, he’s not thinking about anything at all. Purposefully. He doesn’t want to think, because if he thinks, he’ll wonder. Wonder what this is, wonder why, wonder if— _ no _ . No thinking. Just feeling, and right now, feeling is very, very good.

Shirts are stripped off in a hurry, and Dean gets Cas’s bare chest against his own, bare shoulders under his hands, with only the odd scratch of gauze and tape where Cas’s bandage still sits between them. Cas’s hands settle on his biceps, like they don’t know where else they can go. Dean shows him: he swipes his hands over Cas’s neck, chest, thumbing his nipples—Cas gives him a tiny gasp for that, a little steam-whistle of a sound—swooping around to his lower back, cupping his waist. Cas’s hands tentatively follow the same general path; Dean huffs against Cas’s cheek when his thumbs tease his nipples.

“Sensitive,” Dean murmurs against his lips.

“Good?” Cas asks.

Dean nods vehemently. “Yeah, good.”

Cas does it again. Dean has to bite off a swear. Then Cas is nudging his chin up so that he can trail his lips down the line of Dean’s neck, from the bolt of his jaw to the ridge of his collarbone, then back up to lip and suckle at his earlobe, all while his thumbs circle and flick at his nipples and the rest of his fingers clench tight on his ribs. Dean is definitely going to explode if he doesn’t get out of his pants soon, but words are a distant third priority. First priority is keeping Cas’s mouth and hands on his skin, followed closely by pawing at Cas’s waist, hands finding the edge of his jeans; his fingers fumbling trying to get inside.

Cas groans against Dean’s neck, a harsh and unfettered sound that goes straight to Dean’s dick. He works his hands further under those jeans and hauls Cas’s hips closer. With a handful of Cas’s ass and his panting breaths in his ear, Dean feels like an over-boiling pot of lust, and then— 

All his attention arrows down to where their hips are rolling together, his erection jutting into Cas’s hipbone and Cas poking him in the thigh. They both shift on instinct until they meet, until they’re hard together, and then— 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Dean groans, his head thumping back against the door at the denim-rough touch. “Are we—Are we doing this?”  _ Please say we’re doing this. _

Cas gives a sharp thrust, thoughtless and primal; the friction burns from Dean’s prick out through his blood and bones and makes him shake. “I want to,” he breathes.

“Good enough for me,” Dean says, and pushes off the door to stumble-shuffle them toward the bed.

Cas goes down easy, pulling Dean on top of him by his belt loops, scooting up the rumpled blankets and slotting their legs together. Dean lays over the length of him, very aware of the skin of their chests barely brushing, the constriction of his jeans, Cas’s injured shoulder. Cas seems to be feeling no pain, though, so Dean dives right back into kissing him. 

Fuck. A pulse thrums through him, vibrating, as his addled brain tries to scream that this is  _ Cas _ underneath him. He's imagined this so many times, he almost wonders if he can trust his drunken haze. But there's no mistaking the gravel in his voice as he groans, the strength of those hands as they map Dean's skin. He rakes his nails down Dean's shoulder blades; Dean hisses and imagines the pink-white lines he'll see there in the mirror tomorrow. 

“Hey. What d’you—what—” he tries to ask. 

“I—I don’t know,” Cas breathes. He looks transfixed, wide-eyed in the dark of their unlit room, only the streaks of the streetlight through the blinds catching his profile. Dean has to kiss him again, the length of him under Dean’s body like a shuddering feast.

Slowly, swallowing the taste of Cas's mouth, Dean sits back far enough to reach between them for Cas's fly. Cas sucks in air, holds it while Dean fumbles one-handed with the button and drags down the zip. 

Inside, Dean's hand encounters only skin. 

"Shit," he exhales, coarse hair and warm flesh sparking against his fingers. "You been goin’ commando this whole time?" 

Cas gives a rueful little laugh. "I wasn't certain of the protocol on shared undergarments." 

"Alright, that's fair." He wants to tell him that he could have borrowed whatever he wanted, he's kinda into that, but—but the words get stuck on the back of his teeth and he settles for pressing kisses under Cas's navel while tugging the second-hand jeans down his hips. Cas lifts to help, and the flex of muscles under his mouth puts all kinds of thoughts into Dean's head. "You ever—" He can't believe he's about to say this. "You ever had your dick sucked?" 

Those muscles tense again, like he's trying to hold back. "No," he gasps. 

"Well then," Dean says with a smirk as he slides Cas's jeans all the way off, gently pushes Cas's knees apart, and winks up at him from between them. "Brace yourself." 

Dean wets his lips and sucks the head of Cas's cock between them for the first time—fuck, let this only be a first—and Cas  _ keens _ , an open-mouthed whine like he's dying. Through the mattress Dean feels him slam both fists down at his sides as he pushes up into Dean’s mouth, unthinking and needy. The head of his cock feels like a dream as it presses against Dean’s tongue, his soft palate, down to the back of his throat. Fuck, Dean’s always loved this. He opens wide and swallows him down, one hand snaking up to grip the base—he was right,  _ hefty _ —and the other curling under Cas’s thigh to wrap around his hip. Cas lifts his knees, gets his feet on the mattress for leverage _ .  _ The heat of his thrusts pours through Dean, prickling and urgent down his back and thighs. Dean can’t tell if the stranglehold of denim on his dick feels good or painful. Both? He’s just desperate for contact, so desperate, he squeezes himself between his own thighs as he bobs his head in time with Cas’s movements.

“Dean— _ Dean _ —” Cas groans. His hands are still balled into fists, and he pushes them against Dean’s shoulders, knuckles hard in his muscles. Dean pops off.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t make me come yet,” Cas says, fervent, strained.

Dean’s pulse is a drumbeat thrumming through his whole body, and he works his hand carefully up and down Cas’s length. He’s uncut, which is surprising, and Dean pushes the loose skin up and over the head. It flares, and a bead of precome shines wetly in the dark. Dean’s mouth waters _ . _

“Okay,” he says.

“Can you—”

Dean returns his gaze to Cas’s. “Whatever you want, Cas,” he says, and his heart seizes to the side, because—yeah, he means that. The honesty of it chokes him. 

“Can you fuck me?”

“Oh, Jesus,” he groans, dropping his face into the vee of Cas’s groin. He breathes in the musky scent of him, mouths briefly through the hair to find hot skin, then nods and sits back. “Yeah,” he says. “I gotta—hang on—”

He hates leaving the bed, but he needs to dig for the lube and condoms and to get himself out of his pants. By the time he’s accomplished that, Cas has pulled himself a little higher on the bed and has one hand working his erection, just keeping himself going. The other hand is tugging at his balls, and he’s pedaling his heels in the sheets, restless, and his gaze is heavy on Dean’s cock, standing proudly at attention. 

And it’s  _ Cas. _

Dean falls back into the inferno.

Kissing while clothed was intense. Kissing while naked is on a whole nother level. Cas’s thighs go tight around Dean’s hips, and the sticky, stuttering rub of their bare cocks together throws Dean’s whole world off kilter. They’re both breathing so hard they can barely keep kissing, and eventually he settles for pressing various parts of their faces together—foreheads, lips, noses, cheeks—while Dean pumps his dick into the crease of Cas’s thigh. It would be totally possible to just come together like that, and Dean feels it coiling tight—

But Cas asked for something. And if this is going to be the only—

Well. There’s no guarantee he’ll get another shot, so he’s not going to waste this one.

He breaks away and grabs for the lube.

Cas has definitely been watching more than just solo porn because he rolls right on over and presses his hips up and back, presenting Dean with a frankly fucking  _ incredible _ view of his ass. Dean swears and leans his face against one ass cheek, kissing and nibbling while his fingers fumble with the lube cap. 

“You ever, uh.” Dean swallows. “You ever tried this on your own?”

Cas nods into the pillows. “Yes.”

“While watching porn?”

A breath which might be a sigh, might be a laugh. “Yes.”

“That’s hot,” Dean says, pressing a grin into the crease at the top of his thigh. Before Cas can respond, Dean sits back, swirls his slicked index finger around Cas’s hole and presses inside.

Cas is tight and soft and hot, and he gasps brokenly against the pillows. Dean watches him clench his fists in the sheets and press back into the intrusion, watches him snake one hand down under himself as he parts his knees wider. “Okay?” Dean asks, drawing his finger in and out to the second knuckle, gingerly. 

“Dean,” Cas says, nearly a growl. “I’m not going to break.”

Dean laughs at that, a swift kick in the gut, and nods. “Okay.”

He doesn’t waste much more time before adding another finger. Cas swears and braces his free arm against the headboard so he can push back, back bowing and arching as he swivels his hips. Dean feels like he’s on fire just watching him, just feeling those sinful gyrations in his hand. Fuck, how did Cas learn to move like that? If this is him running on pure instinct, Dean can’t wait to see what he’s like once he knows what he’s doing.

If he ever gets the chance.

Dean banishes that thought and starts pulling his fingers out. Slowly. In stages. Until Cas barks at him to hurry up and fuck him, and Dean is obeying before he even knows what hit him. He searches for the condom, but then Cas is handing it over his shoulder, already open and ready to go. His hands tremble as he prepares himself—condom, lube, how is this taking so fucking long, Cas is  _ right there waiting— _ and then finally, he knee-shuffles up behind Cas and takes his hips in both hands.

“Ready?” he asks himself as much as Cas.

Cas nods, not making a sound. Something thunks in Dean’s stomach.

“You gotta tell me, buddy,” he says.

Cas turns his head so that Dean catches his profile, a glimpse of his eye and the dewy blush in his cheeks. “I’m ready,” he says.

Dean swallows, nods, and pushes in.

“Sonuva—” he grunts before biting his lip. “You’re tight.”

“Th-thank you?” Cas’s voice is tremulous, reedy in a way Dean has never heard before. Dean finds himself laughing, even as he sinks deeper into the muscled grip of Cas’s body. Then Cas swears—pushes back—and Dean’s in,  _ all _ the way in, his hips flush to Cas’s ass cheeks. He braces himself on the bed, then lets himself down to lay a line of open-mouthed kisses across Cas’s shoulders. He tastes like clean sweat. He’s incredible. Dean almost tells him so.

Instead, he picks up a small, subtle rhythm with his hips, drawing his cock out and in again in slow rolls. He feels Cas jerk underneath him, the breath punching out of him, before he starts moving again, like he had while Dean was fingering him, though now he’s doing it  _ on Dean’s cock _ , and Dean’s pretty sure this is going to last about four seconds.

So he draws it out as best he can. He sits up tall and pulls almost all the way out so he can plunge back in, twice, three times, before switching to short, sharp jabs that have Cas gasping and cursing brokenly into the pillow. He searches for the best angle and finds it when he leans over Cas’s back and knocks Cas’s knees a little wider, gets his hips a little lower. Cas curls in on himself and squeezes tighter than a fist on Dean’s cock, whining, and Dean does whatever he can think of to turn Cas into a mewling mess, because if this is the only— 

Because he wants Cas to remember this.

It’s selfish, but he wants—

He wants—

“Cas,” he groans. His rhythm slips up, quickens, slips deeper, and he’s suddenly right on the edge. “Cas, I—”

Then, like glass breaking on impact, Cas spasms underneath him. Dean can see his elbow working overtime, hears his broken cries, watches him collapse to the bedsheets in a series of shaking shudders. Watching Cas come is like napalm in Dean’s blood and that, plus the swift, sure grip of Cas’s body, has him stumbling right off the precipice and into the magma of his own orgasm. He feels it in his extremities, tingling and sharp, straight down to his core where it hollows him out, clean, scouring.

“Fuck, Cas,” he sighs as he comes down.

Cas doesn’t say anything in response. Nothing except a few grunting affirmations.

With limbs like quicksand and no proper sense of gravity, Dean doesn’t do much more than dispose of the condom before flopping down on the bed with a huge, satisfied sigh. Cas lolls on the blankets, and Dean doesn’t even have the heart to shove him back over to his side. He lays there for a long moment while his body ticks down from overdrive, his pulse slowing to normal.

When the sweat has dried on his skin and Cas still hasn’t said anything, though, a nervous thread sews through Dean’s heart. “You alright?” he asks, gentle as he can.

Cas sucks in a big breath. “Yeah,” he sighs, then pushes up off the mattress. “Bathroom,” he says, and wobbles toward the door.

Dean can’t blame him, not really. Still, it leaves him feeling off-kilter, an anchor dragging in his chest. He stretches on the bed, then gets up to straighten out the sheets, grab some water from the minifridge. His head feels a little swimmy, and he’s not sure if that’s from the booze or from—from that. 

He just fucked Cas.

Jesus.

The enormity of it thumps into his skull like an impending hangover, and he swallows a slick mouthful of adrenaline spit. He stares at the line of gold around the closed bathroom door, the brightest thing in the room, and feels the floor the pitch and roll like a ship’s deck in a storm. Myriad possibilities swirl around in his brain, and he’s not sure if he wants to subject himself to the pain of hope, or just let this be—whatever it is.

His head aches and his teeth feel fuzzy, but Dean slides back into the bed anyway, rearranging the covers. He curls up on his side, knees tucked up, protective.

By the time Cas comes back out, Dean’s counted about a thousand heartbeats in the dark. 

Cas stands at the foot of the bed for a long time, out of Dean’s line of sight. Eventually, Dean gets sick of playing possum and lifts his head. “Hey,” he says, and Cas jumps. “Come on in, the water’s great.”

Cas exhales hard in what might pass for a laugh, and that’s enough, at least, to get him moving. Dean watches his silhouette putter around the room, feels another thud in his belly when he sees Cas pulling on the flannel pj pants. Dean’s still naked. Should he not be?

Whatever. He’s not getting back out of this bed.

There’s a chilly draft when Cas lifts the blanket, then the dip of his weight, and Dean’s fighting gravity again to stay out of the middle.

But should he? Does he have to?

He doesn’t know.

Ultimately, he does scoot a little closer under the guise of getting comfy. Cas is laying flat on his back, and Dean can tell by his breathing that he’s not asleep.

“We didn’t check your shoulder,” Dean says eventually.

Cas’s eyes flutter open. “Is it important?”

It probably is, but the lethargy in Dean’s limbs is pulling at him. Exhaustion from the case, the drowsiness of whiskey, and the—that—they’re all swelling up around him and dragging him down in the undertow. “We’ll get it in the morning,” he says around a yawn. “G’night, Cas,” he says.

It feels like a long time before Cas responds. “Goodnight, Dean.”

More than halfway asleep, Dean curls tighter on himself until his forehead touches the jut of Cas’s shoulder. It’s not quite a nuzzle, and he can deny it if he has to.

With that single point of contact, he sleeps.

~~

It starts with a shift of sheets. A rustle of fabric. A bounce of the bedsprings under Dean’s spine, a quiet huff that wriggles through the wool of sleep in his ears. Dean tries to sleep through it, or at least pretend, but then Cas whines, and Dean lets his eyes flutter open.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks in a whisper.

For a second, Cas doesn’t say anything, and then, “Obviously.”

There’s silence for a minute, then Cas squirms again. “Sorry I woke you,” he says.

“S’okay. Is it your shoulder?”

“It itches,” Cas grouses.

“You want a painkiller?”

“I said it itches, Dean, not that it hurts.”

“Might help you sleep.”

A quiet beat, and then, “No, thank you.”

Dean nods. Cas fidgets some more, tries to be still. Fails. Huffs. Then flings himself out of bed to pace the floor. 

Dean sits up. “You okay?”

“No.”

Dean swallows, watches his shadow pace for a minute, back and forth like a one-man tennis match. “Something you wanna talk about?”

“No,” Cas snaps, sharper than before.

One more lap up and down the foot of the bed. Dean waits him out, in spite of the churning nervousness in his belly.

Finally, he looses an explosive sigh. “Is there any way to stop the itching?”

Dean nods slowly. “Yeah. Probably just needs a wipe-down.”

It’s only when Dean kicks his feet off the side of the bed that he remembers he’s still naked. With heat burning up his neck, he says, “Uh. You remember where my boxers wound up?”

Cas doesn’t say anything. Dean clears his throat. “Alright, nevermind.” He stands up with an awkward shuffle, trying to hide his junk while he digs in the darkness for his jeans. Doesn’t even know why he bothers; he had his dick in Cas’s ass just a few hours ago, and now he’s—there they are. He tugs the boxers on like armor before he turns.

Cas is watching. Furtively, half turned away like he’s aiming for plausible deniability, but Dean can see the wet shine of his eyes, his lips.

“Okay,” he says. “Have a seat, we’ll take care of that shoulder.”

By unspoken agreement, neither of them turn on the light, maneuvering by somatic sense and the diagonal orange lines of the street lamp through the blinds. Dean grabs a clean gauze and some sterile alcohol wipes, then peels back the bandage.

“This ain’t so bad,” he says. “I mean, probably feels like shit, but we’ll be able to take the stitches out pretty soon after we get home.”

Cas doesn’t say anything, but he does sigh, a forceful little huff that spins up a tornado in Dean’s stomach.

“You are coming home with us, right? Back to the bunker?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and as soon as they are, he wants to snatch them back out of the air. There’s no universe in which he needs to ask that question, and he definitely doesn’t want to hear the answer right now. 

But Cas just snaps his head around to look at him. “Where else would I go?” he asks.

Dean shrugs, fussing with the wipes. “I dunno. Anywhere you want.” What the hell is he saying? “Don’t get me wrong, I like having you around. A lot. But you don’t have to—you know, there’s a lot of the world out there, and this life is not exactly anybody’s first choice.”

Cas doesn’t respond to that, staring into the middle distance while Dean cleans and dries around the stitches. Silence stretches between them, thin and brittle. Then, eventually, “I didn’t want to need help, Dean. Not with this.”

Dean searches for the train of his thoughts and comes up blank. “With your shoulder?”

“No, with—this.” He gestures vaguely between the two of them and then at the bed. There's a hard knot in Dean's throat when he tries to speak again.

“I—it’s, uh, pretty clear you don’t need my help in that department.”

Cas ducks his head. The low light masks his expression. “I let myself get carried away," he murmurs eventually. 

Dean almost laughs. “Hate to break it to you, buddy, but that's what sex is all about.” 

“This was a bad idea,” Cas says, lower than a whisper. Dean’s not even certain he was meant to hear it.

“Come again?” he asks.

“What we—did. Not a good idea." 

The words feel like a slap to the face, and Dean's headache roars to life with the pounding of his pulse. “Look, I don’t want to go pointing fingers, but you kinda started it.”

“I know,” Cas bites the words off, then sighs. He pulls away from Dean's hands, wound still unbandaged, and starts to pace again at the foot of the bed. 

Something tight starts to squeeze in Dean's chest, like bars of iron forcing his breath from his lungs. His heartbeat is in his throat and it tastes like acid. “Look," he says, "what do you want me to say? I'm sorry? Because I'm—if you have a problem with what we just did, then—I thought—” Now he knows the name of that feeling: it's dread. And it turns cold at a sudden new fear. “You did—you did want to—right?” 

Cas scoffs. “Don't worry, Dean. You had my full and enthusiastic consent.” Weirdly, though, he doesn't sound happy about it. Dean can't make heads or tails of it. 

“Then… what's going on, Cas?” 

Cas stops his restless back and forth shuffle. Dean stares at the street-lamp glow making tiger stripes across his back, his shoulders tight and heaving with his breaths. Cautiously, Dean approaches and lifts a hand toward him, but his fingers curl, and he drops it before landing. 

“Look, um.” Fuck this. Dean knows when it’s time to cut his losses. “It doesn't have to be a big deal, alright? We're just two consenting adults having a good time. And that's—that's all it has to be. Okay? Don't go making mountains out of molehills. There's nothing wrong with just enjoying yourself. No strings attached.”

Cas whirls to face him, incredulity writ large on his face. “You don't get it, do you?” 

Dean swallows. “Get what?”

A series of unreadable expressions flicker over Cas’s face, settling on something that looks closer to nausea than anything else. He stares hard into Dean’s face, and he has that feeling again of being pinned under a microscope, of being stripped to the bone. He tries to withstand the eye contact, but it doesn’t work. It burns, and he flinches away.

“Nevermind,” Castiel says at last, flat, emotionless. “Where are the bandages?”

Something has slipped out of place, like a missing song on your favorite album, like driving a familiar road and seeing only strange houses. Dean swipes a hand over his itchy eyes, and it feels so good to close them. “There’s one on the table,” he says. “Sit back down, I’ll—”

“I can do it,” Cas says, already pushing past Dean. There isn’t even time to appreciate the brush of their skin together before he’s gone, a dark silhouette against the window, head bowed. In that moment, he looks more like a fallen angel than Dean’s ever seen: otherworldly, even when wounded. Still untouchable, even with his feet on the ground.

Dean nods to himself, then drifts toward the bed, crawling under the covers on autopilot.

He watches Cas’s profile in the dark for a while. Lets the soft sound of scissors and tape lull him back to sleep quicker than he thought possible.

He’s dozing by the time Cas comes back to bed, so he’s not sure if the soft fingertips that brush his hair off his forehead are real, or just a part of his dream.


	5. Chapter 5

The morning dawns gray and dismal with the threat of rain. Dean rises early and gets their shit together while Cas is still passed out, grabs coffee from the diner and leaves a cup on the table for him, then loiters around by the Impala. He's itching to get gone. The case is done; it's time to burn rubber. 

Sam joins him first, pulling around in a powder-blue Honda CRX. Dean sips at his cooling paper cup of coffee as Sam unfolds from the driver’s seat. “Jeeze, you drove that thing all the way from Kansas?” is how he says good morning. “How'd you even fit in that Crackerjack box? You been practicing your origami?”

Sam throws him a mild form of bitchface. “Where’s Cas?” he asks. “It’s almost checkout.”

The hot-and-cold feeling pressing on Dean’s chest at Cas’s name makes it hard to breathe. “Still dead to the world, last I checked,” he says to his coffee.

Sam’s bitchface morphs into a confused wrinkle. “If that had been me, you’d have thrown a shoe at my head,” he says, then starts toward the door.

Dean stays right where he is. 

Then his brain spins up a kaleidoscope of incriminating things that might pop out of Cas's mouth, and he hurries to follow. 

Just as he starts up the pair of steps that lead to the door, Sam pops his head back out. “Did you pack up all the clothes?”

~~

Somehow, it’s decided that Cas will drive the CRX back to Lebanon so that Sam can return it to Mrs. Butterworths or whatever her name was that he borrowed it from. “Why couldn’t you just steal a car like the good old days?” Dean complains.

“We have a home base now,” Sam says. “It wouldn’t be good to just start stealing our neighbors’ cars whenever I need to get somewhere.”

Dean huffs and rolls his palms over the steering wheel. Sam’s shape in the passenger seat is just like it’s always been: long and angular, all knees and elbows and hair. It should be a comfort, but something doesn’t sit right with Dean as rural Wisconsin flies past their windows and the Impala’s tires eat up the asphalt. It’s like he forgot something, though he knows he didn’t, but it pings in his brain the same way, making him glance in the rearview every other mile. Whenever he catches a glimpse of the little blue coupe somewhere in the sparse traffic behind him, that itch in his lizard brain calms down for a few minutes.

Somewhere past Wausau, Sam shifts in his seat in the way that means he’s got an impending question. He does it four or five times, and Dean starts his internal countdown.

“You okay?” he asks eventually.

Dean has an “I’m fine” already on his lips, complete with turning up the AC/DC. Sam turns it back down, and Dean fights the childish urge to slap his hand away. “What?”

Sam shrugs. “Just. The speed limit’s sixty-five.”

“I’m going sixty-five.”

“Exactly. That’s what’s weird.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, Cas drives like a grandma, so.”

Sam’s quiet for another half mile, and then, “You know Cas can find his own way back to the bunker, right? He knows where it is.”

Dean feels his back teeth click together and grind. “Better not risk it.”

“Risk what?”

Dean doesn’t answer that for a few seconds, so Sam tries a different track. “What’re you gonna do, make sure we’re caravaning the whole nine hundred miles home?”

“If I have to.”

Sam sighs a heavy, bitchy sigh and sinks down in the seat. One foot tucks up next to the side mirror, the way he did when he was all bones and teenage ennui. Dean lets it slide. What’s one more set of footprints on his car? He’s gonna detail her interior when they get back, anyway. It’ll be good to have something to occupy his brain and his hands while he avoids Cas, like he knows he will.

Assuming Cas is even there to avoid.

He checks the rearview again. Still there.

They drive in silence for a while, just gray sky and black road and rock music wailing from the speakers. Dean switches from AC/DC to some Bob Dylan because he’s feeling nice. 

Outside of Eau Claire, near a little town called Elk Mound, Sam opens his big fat mouth again. “So, you and Cas—”

“Not this again,” Dean sighs without thinking.

“Huh?”

“Nothing happened!” Dean insists. “There is no me and Cas, okay? We didn’t do anything, and whatever we did do, it—it didn’t mean anything. It was just—nothing happened!”

In the silence that follows, Dean’s heart pounds dully against his sternum in time with the white lane lines flying past. His palms sweat on the steering wheel. When he glances over, Sam’s eyebrows are in his hairline. “I was just gonna say nice job on the hunt,” he says mildly.

Dean deflates. “Psh. You had to come bail our asses,” he says, and tries to pretend he’s not itching under his collar.

“You guys did all the leg work,” Sam says. “And then some, from the sounds of it.”

“Hey, you know what—” Dean stops mid-threat and grips the steering wheel tighter. He peers into the rearview so intently, the car starts to drift toward the shoulder.

“What?” Sam asks.

“Where’s Cas?”

“Huh?”

“He’s not behind us. I can’t see him.”

“Well, you did say he drives like a grandma.”

“Yeah, but what if he—” He bites his tongue. 

“What if he what?”

“Nothing.”

“Uh-huh. You keep telling yourself that.” Sam sounds completely unconvinced, and frankly, Dean can’t blame him. He swipes one hand over his face and it feels hot to the touch, to say nothing of the anxiety tingling under his jaw. He starts eyeing the exit signs, looking for a good place to turn off and go back.

“He just texted me,” Sam says, and when Dean looks, he sees him tapping on his phone. “He stopped for gas in Chippewa Falls. He says to text him when we stop for lunch and he’ll meet us there.”

The release of relief wars with a dull bitterness in Dean’s belly. “So he’s texting you now?” he asks.

“That’s the price you pay, being the driver,” Sam says, putting away his phone with a definite air of smugness that has Dean rolling his eyes.

“Screw you.”

~~

Lunch is a strange affair, one where Dean tries to pretend he’s not watching Cas and Cas studies the potholes in the gravel parking lot out the window. Sam carries on half-hearted conversations with both of them as if the other weren’t there, and by the end of lunch, looks ready to kick something or bust a gut laughing; Dean’s not sure which. Then there’s more driving, and they don’t bother to stop for dinner, instead just grabbing some snacks at a Gas ‘n’ Sip. Dean eventually flips the rearview so that he can’t actually see out the back, which helps. Sort of.

It’s dark by the time they get back to the bunker, but not exactly late. They haul in their crap, and Dean does the smart thing, starting laundry immediately so that it doesn’t get neglected. He sets aside the red hoodie for now; it’s going to need some special attention. Assuming it doesn’t just go in the trash, but he’ll let Cas make that call. 

When he gets back.

Dean doesn’t realize he’s carried the red hoodie with him out of the laundry room until he’s draping it over the back of a kitchen chair. He unclenches his fingers deliberately and gives the hoodie a stupid little pat before making his way toward the fridge. 

If he’s ever needed a fucking beer...

Sam makes himself scarce, in the library or his room or whatever. Eventually he pops his head into the kitchen to say he’s going to bed. Dean tips the bottle at him and doesn’t move.

He tells himself he’s just not tired yet, but by the time he’s nodding off over the dregs of his second beer, the lie wears thin.

Cas couldn’t have been _ that _ far behind them. What is taking him so long?

Finally, when Dean’s scrolled so far down Reddit he’s getting to the _ really weird shit _, he hears the creak of the door opening and closing, Cas’s sneakered footsteps shuffling along stone. 

Dean stays right where he is, even though adrenaline floods his system. He’s suddenly on edge, his fight-or-flight instinct tugging him in two different directions. Now that he knows Cas is back, he could high-tail it to his room and just stay there until—

Until what?

Or he could rush out there and ambush the guy, pin him down and get a straight story out of him—although that may be a poor choice of metaphor because his brain wants him to take that literally, and he’s not even sure what answers he wants.

In the end, he stays put, peeling the label of his beer bottle and waiting. He’s swallowing his last stale mouthful when Cas shuffles into the doorway.

He looks surprised. Dean sets the bottle off to the side with a hollow thunk.

“Hey, Cas,” he says, his voice sounding charred and loud in the nighttime silence.

Cas blinks at him. “You didn’t have to wait up for me,” he says, and it’s almost an accusation.

Dean shrugs. “Didn’t wait up for you,” he mumbles. Cas’s gaze slides to the dead soldiers on the table, the red hoodie balled up on the back of the chair across from Dean. Then back to Dean. And he raises an eyebrow. Dean rolls his eyes. “Okay, fine, I waited up for you.”

Cas presses his lips into a thin line and pinches the corner hem of his flannel between thumb and forefinger. 

“How’s the shoulder?” Dean asks eventually.

Cas does his little check-in shoulder roll. “Sore,” he says. “Itchy. I don’t think driving for twelve hours helped.”

Dean nods. “Yeah, why did you end up driving back, anyway?”

“Because Sam already had bruises on his knees from the steering wheel,” Cas says. Dean chuckles.

“His fault for borrowing a damn clown car,” Dean says with half a smile. He hears Cas laugh, and that’s enough to get him looking up. His stomach jolts at the hint of sparkle in Cas’s eyes, the smile on his face, and for half a second, it’s easy again. 

But as soon as that zing of connection hits him in the back of the brain, the light dims. Cas’s fingers tighten in the hoodie, and Dean drops his gaze to the tabletop.

“Well,” he says. “Goodnight, Dean.”

He picks up the hoodie and starts to leave the kitchen, and the sight of his retreating back is all at once too much—Dean finds himself on his feet—because it’s the same fear he felt every time he couldn’t see Cas in the rearview, the same skipped-track feeling that had yawned in his belly after—after—

“Cas, wait.”

Cas stops. Half-turns so that Dean sees his face in profile.

“Sit—c’mon, sit down,” Dean says. “We should, uh. Probably talk.”

“I’m tired, Dean,” he says.

“I know. Me too. But we should—”

Cas whirls to face him. “What is there to talk about?”

Dean opens his mouth once, then says, “Us. This. Whatever—whatever it was that happened back there, because I dunno about you, but I’m feeling a little off-balance here.”

“You?” Cas scoffs. “You’re feeling off-balance? How do you think I feel?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Dean says, and he wants to beg, wants to plead, but it comes out like a gunshot.

“Don’t play games with me, Dean. You’ve already made your stance very clear.” His words are clipped. His eyes are blue fire.

“Well, at least one of us has,” he snaps back. “I don’t have any idea what it is you’re after!”

Cas laughs, bitter and short. “If you don’t know by now—” he starts. Dean cuts him off.

“I’m not a mind-reader, Cas. I can’t know anything if you don’t tell me.”

Cas advances quicker than a wildfire, and then there’s cold stone at Dean’s back and hot hands on his shoulders and Cas’s mouth descending on his own. He _ mmfs _ against the pressure of lips, opens on instinct to the intrusion of his tongue and the snap of his teeth. But the second his hands come up to clutch at Cas’s waist, Cas rips away, breathing like he’s being tortured and one hand over his mouth.

“Cas,” Dean gasps, reaches for him— 

“I can’t do this,” he bites out, and starts to flee.

“Dammit, Cas!” Dean calls out. “Why not?”

“Because this”—he gestures between them—“is all you want. Just a roll in the hay, just two consenting adults having a good time. And I can’t do that, Dean. Not with you.”

He turns again, and Dean feels flannel and muscled arm under his hand before he’s even aware that he’s moved. “Cas, wait—”

Cas pulls out of his grip. Dean tries again, tries to follow his quick retreat, but— “Don’t,” Cas bites out. It’s firm and almost a threat and it sticks Dean’s feet to the floor.

All he can do is watch Cas storm off, feeling like all of his guts are spilling out onto the floor behind him, trying to follow.

In the buzzing silence he leaves in his wake, Dean’s only certain of one thing.

He’s made a huge fucking mistake.

~~

Under the Impala is a great place to think. Or to not think. It’s been his habit for years, pretty much since the car crash that had nearly ended her, and them. He keeps her in tip-top shape now, especially since they got the bunker and he actually has space to keep tools and work on her reliably. The trouble is, he keeps her in such good condition that when he does need an excuse to disappear for a while to sort out his own head, there’s not as much to do. He’s already taken care of the accumulated road dust in her wheel wells, the footprints all over her interior—thanks, Sam—tuned her up, changed her oil, checked all her fluids, and given her a wax. Now he’s got her up on jacks and his head and shoulders under her engine, just kind of poking around, knocking grease into his eyes for no reason, except that when he’s down here, he can safely chew on the cud of his own stupidity and not worry about any commentary— 

“How long are you planning on hiding this time?”

The crack of his skull on metal rings in his ears, blinding him temporarily. He swears a blue streak and can vaguely hear Sam either apologizing or laughing on the other side of it. Or both. Probably both.

“Buzz off, Sam,” he grunts as he checks his fingers and the new sore spot on his brow. No blood. Small mercies.

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

Dean sighs. In the strip of garage he can see from under the car, Sam’s ankles cross where he leans against the bench, clearly settling in for the long haul. So much for peace and quiet.

“What’d’you want?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Alright. Talk.” He grabs a socket wrench and tightens something that doesn’t really need to be tightened, just so that it sounds like he’s doing something.

“Not while you’re under there. Come out.”

“Little busy, Sam.”

“Okay, fine.” Sam’s feet shuffle into a wider stance. “I talked to Cas.”

The wrench slips in Dean’s hand, and he barely avoids another bean to the head. “‘Bout what?”

“Give you three guesses.”

The pit in Dean’s stomach hardens to stone, pressing up under his heart, but it doesn't manage to force out any words.

“Look, I know how you feel about him,” Sam says at last. “You have any idea how long I’ve watched you guys dance around each other? But he seems to think it was just a one-time thing and won’t listen when I tell him otherwise.”

Dean rolls himself out from under the car into the bright light of the garage. “What did you tell him?” he asks. 

Sam shrugs. “Nothing much. Just that he’s got you the wrong way around, and that he should just tell you how he feels.”

“Yeah, that’s what I tried to get out of him," Dean says, hauling himself up to sit on the dolly. "But all I got was a cold shoulder.” 

“Well,” Sam shrugs, “Did you tell him how _ you _feel?”

Dean stares at the concrete floor between his feet. “No.”

“One of you’s gotta be the brave one here,” Sam says. “And remember, he’s new at this.”

“So? Not like I’ve ever—” _ Been in love. _ He can’t say it. Not to Sam. Not yet.

“This is the blind leading the visually challenged, isn’t it?” Sam asks with a smirk in his voice.

Dean snorts. “You can say that again.”

“Just take a leap, Dean. You’ll both be happier for it.”

“You’re assuming I can pin him down long enough to have a conversation. I’m sorta surprised you managed.”

“It’s not me he’s avoiding.”

Dean concedes that point with a sideways nod.

Silence lingers between them. Sam doesn’t move. Dean stares between his own feet, or at the grease on his ratty jeans, or at his work-torn knuckles. “What do I say?” he asks eventually, heart in his mouth.

“Can’t tell you that,” Sam says. “But so long as it’s honest, I think you’ll be okay.”

Dean sighs, rubbing tension from his brow with the least-greasy spot on the back of his hand. “Okay,” he says. Sam doesn’t move. “Okay, fine, you’ve convinced me.” Still doesn’t move. “Are you just going to stand there until I go talk to him?”

Sam shrugs, his grin verging closer and closer to shit-eating.

Dean groans and hauls himself up off the dolly. “You’re a bitch,” he says.

“So I’ve been told. Jerk.”

For the first time since Crandon, Dean smiles a genuine smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side note: chapter 6 will be up later tonight! No week of waiting!


	6. Chapter 6

Dean knows a lot about courage. There’s no end to the battles he’s charged into head first, barely pausing to steel himself. But this? This shit scares him. The hell is he supposed to do? Just walk up to Cas and say “Hey, buddy, I actually kind of love you and want to be with you forever”? Fat chance. Just practicing the conversation in his head—which he totally doesn’t do, by the way—makes him feel like crawling under a rock. Or maybe into a bottle. Let it never be said that Winchesters have healthy coping mechanisms.

But he promised Sam, so he at least stops hiding, even if he can’t find it in himself to face the conversation dead on. He tries to put himself in places where conversation might naturally happen: the kitchen. The library. The TV room. He even puts on  _ Return of the Jedi _ to try and recreate that moment in their hotel room, but all it gets him is a tepid, sweaty beer in his hands and an empty spot on the couch next to him.

He tries. He really does try. He feels like he’s being falsely, absurdly friendly toward Cas in his efforts to approach the conversation obliquely, but Cas is never anything but stiff and avoidant in response. By the second week of bright morning greetings and cordial invitations, Dean’s getting a little sick of constantly being blown off for some research project or his increasingly worrisome running habit or the garden he’s trying to start on the south side of the bunker or whatever little thing Cas is preoccupied with these days. It’s infuriating, and from the volume of his eyerolls, Sam is one brush-off away from locking them in the dungeon until they’ve fucked their way out of this gordian knot of miscommunication.

It’s not even miscommunication. For miscommunication, there has to be communication in the first place.

In the end, it happens because Dean sleeps in one morning. He’d stayed up way too late watching stupid shows waiting for Cas to turn up, only to wander past his room and hear him sawing logs. When Dean does finally drag his ass out of bed, the moment he opens his door, he smells bacon and eggs, butter, vanilla, and cinnamon.

And burning.

There’s a thin haze in the kitchen when Dean rushes in, and in the middle of the cloud is Cas, juggling two smoking pans and looking like a startled deer. “Here—” Dean grabs one of the handles out of his hand, reaches for the dial to turn off the red-hot burner, then sets the pan down on one of the cool burners at the back. Cas follows suit.

“I’m sorry,” Cas says, his mouth an angry purse.

Dean turns on the brightest grin he can manage. “Hey, no big deal. We’ve all burned a few breakfasts.” Surveying the mess, Dean clocks an over-soaked piece of bread sitting in a lumpy egg mixture, too brown with an overabundance of vanilla. The first round of bacon didn’t seem to have gone too badly, though, and Dean reaches for one of the rashers on the cooling rack. “Besides, wasn’t a total loss,” he says, waggling the strip at Cas before chomping down on half of it. Crispy on the edge and chewy in the middle. He  _ hmms _ in satisfaction. “That’s good bacon.”

Cas ducks his head. “Thank you.”

He looks like he’s about to run, and Dean’s heart jumps into his throat. “So, you, uh, coming around to breakfast now?”

Cas shrugs. “I felt like experimenting.”

In hindsight, Dean will blame his lack of coffee for the next words that tumble off his tongue: “Ran out of porn, I guess?” Even as he says them, he wants to roll them back up into his mouth and swallow them, pretend they were never even there. 

Cas’s face turns beet red and he squeezes his eyes shut; he looks like he can’t decide if he’s angry or humiliated. “Will you just—forget about that, please?” he asks.

“Hey—look. Sorry. I’m not trying to make fun, I promise.”

It’s an uncomfortable silence that follows, both of them feeling the weight of the elephant in the room.

Finally, Dean says, “I think I know where this went wrong,” he says, gesturing to the breakfast. “Mind if I lend a hand?”

Cas shies away a little.

“Please?” Dean blinks down at the counter; eye contact is difficult.

Cas stares at him for another few moments, weighing, measuring. “Okay,” he says at last.

It’s a small success, but it is a success, and it glows in Dean’s heart like a newborn star.

“Okay,” he says. He can barely contain the smile on his face. “Grab some more eggs, we’ll get this going.”

Shoulder to shoulder, Dean shows him how a little vanilla goes a long way. Helps him beat the eggs to the right consistency, explains the vagaries of their stove and how hot to get the pan. Slowly, Cas relaxes, and when he exactly follows Dean’s demonstration of how to flip their perfectly toasted bread without using a spatula, the warmth of their shared grins tingles right down to Dean’s toes.

“We’ll make a master chef outta you in no time,” he says.

“I don’t think I’d want to be on a reality TV show,” Cas says, contemplative. Dean’s laughter rings off the walls.

Sam wanders in while they’re finishing up the last round. He takes one look at them, collects his coffee and a plate, then skedaddles with some vague excuse about finishing a book in his room. The  _ look  _ he gives to Dean as he passes is like a shove between his shoulders. It makes Dean suck in a breath that rattles around in his ribs before he blows it out.

“He didn’t take any syrup,” Cas observes.

Dean snaps back to the present moment. “Yeah, no, he never does. I don’t get it.”

“The syrup is the best part.”

“Right?” Dean shakes his head. “I knew I loved you for a reason.”

And then his skin runs hot and then cold as his brain catches up to his words. What the fuck is with his brain today? All their careful dancing around, and then it slips out by fucking accident? Ain't that just his fucking life. 

Cas has gone very still. “Dean—”

_ Here goes nothing. _

“I mean that,” he says. “Look, I know what I said back in Crandon, that it didn’t have to be a big deal or whatever, but—I don’t want you to think that’s what I want.”

Cas squints at him, wary, and turns off the heat under his pan. Dean does too, just in time to keep it from burning. “Then what  _ do _ you want, Dean?” Castiel asks, arms crossed over his chest.

“You.” It feels like Dean’s heart is about to leap out of his mouth and run screaming into the night, but now that the floodgates are open, there’s no stopping it. “I’m not good with all this mushy stuff, I’m really, really not, I think I’ve proven that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t—have feelings for you. Because I do. Like, a lot of feelings. And I don’t know what that’s gonna look like, except that I wanna be close to you and, and do things with you—you know. And not just—stuff, y’know, but like this, like making breakfast and watching movies and all the little bullshit moments that make life really, really good, I just wanna share all that with you, Cas—”

“Stop.” Cas’s quiet voice cuts across his rambling, which is good, because Dean wasn’t sure where that train was headed. Off the rails, probably. But in the wake of his silence, there’s no sound other than Cas’s breathing, heavy like he’s been fighting for his life. “If that’s what you want, then why didn’t you say so? Why did you say it was nothing?”

“Because I’m an idiot,” Dean says. “I thought that might make it easier for you or something.” That’s true, but it’s not the whole truth, and if Dean’s going to do this honesty thing, better do it right. “And I was trying to protect myself.”

“From—what, from me?” 

Dean nods. “In case you didn’t feel the same way.” He swallows, his pulse beating against his larynx. “You—you do, though, right?”

Cas stands stone-still for a long moment, not meeting Dean’s eyes. It’s long enough that panic starts to flutter to life, but then his chin jerks in a nod that looks like it takes more courage than going toe to toe with an archangel.

“I don’t know how to do this, Dean,” he says, words carried on a swift sigh. “Any of it.”

“I know,” Dean says, his tongue quick in his relief. “That’s why I want—”

“Shh,” Cas holds out a halting hand. “I don’t know how to do this, but I feel like I should. I’ve been watching you humans for millennia, but I don't know how any of this works from the inside. From an outside perspective, it always seems so simple, but I could never have begun to guess how—how tangled up it makes you.” He shakes his head at himself, scrubs his fingertips over his own face. “I’ve wanted this—you—for a long time, too. But I wanted to be good at it before I got here. Not just stumbling through making a fool of myself.”

Dean tries to listen through the ringing in his ears, tries to hear what Cas is actually saying beyond ‘I love you too.’ “Hey, I don't need you to be some Lothario Joe. I just need you to be you, Cas. You're the one I—I fell in love with." Fuck, it sounds strange coming off his tongue like that, but the truth of it burns all the way down his chest, a hundred shots of fine-ass whiskey all at once. He grins through the truth of it, and when he looks back up from his own feet, Cas has that deer-in-headlights look again. "Besides, I got news for you, buddy." 

"What news?" God, he sounds floored. 

“Everyone is just stumbling through making fools of themselves. Nobody knows what the hell they’re doing when it comes to this ‘feelings’ crap. I sure don’t.” He risks a shuffling step closer, drawn in like a magnet, then reaches a hand to carefully cup Cas’s jaw. “But I do know one thing. Muddling through on your own is a hell of a lot less fun than muddling through together.”

Cas leans his chin hard into Dean’s palm. “It’s—terrifying,” he says. “Why is it terrifying? With everything we’ve been through, this should be the least of my fears.”

“It’s always scary when it matters.” Which might explain why his own pulse is pounding against every inch of his skin, why his temples feel cooled by sweat.

Finally, finally, Cas meets his eyes, and Dean’s floored by how much he’s missed that clear cerulean. He can see the fear there, but he also sees the courage, the courage that defied God and the Devil and everyone in between. He sees the moment when Castiel steels himself and takes a very human leap of faith.

In that moment, Dean vows to himself that he will always be there to catch him.

Cas shuffles closer, and Dean’s hand slides up into his hair. They bump elbows and hips, a little clumsy, but determined to find the ways their bodies slot together. Cas’s hands float to Dean’s sides, his waist, scooping around his back, and then—oh, then they fit, chest to chest, chins hooked over each other’s shoulders. Cas clutches him close, tight enough to squeeze the air from his lungs. Dean squeezes back until his elbows crack, and then a little more.

“I thought kissing you for the first time would be the difficult part,” Cas says just above a whisper in Dean’s ear. “I thought everything would make sense after that.”

Dean’s hands rub up and down his back in soothing, joyful motions. “Yeah, I think maybe the talking part might be kind of important.” 

“Maybe even more important than the kissing?”

“Well, let’s not get too hasty.”

Then Cas is laughing in his arms, and damn if that isn’t an addictive sensation.

Slowly, their embrace eases until they’re just holding on gently, softly. Their fingertips drift in nonsense patterns over their T-shirts, feeling skin through cotton. Dean times his breathing to Cas’s; it’s like listening to music he can’t quite hear but knows by heart, and it starts up a softly swaying dance. Dean loses himself there, his heart soaring around the Cas-shaped weight in his arms. It’s unbelievable.

Eventually, Cas turns his head so that his chin nuzzles under Dean’s jaw, scratchy with stubble. His nose and lips follow, catching Dean’s earlobe before finding the skin of his neck and sending a ripple of goosebumps down Dean’s back. He shivers.

“So,” Cas says, whiskey-smoke voice right under his ear. “What we did. Back in Crandon.”

A flush follows the goosebumps over Dean’s skin. “Yeah?”

“That was—okay?”

He chuckles, low and dirty. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was more than okay.”

The sound and vibration of Cas humming against his neck sends all kinds of shivers down Dean’s spine. He pulls Cas closer still, until it’s not just their chests and stomachs pressed together, but their hips and groins too. Dean’s not even close to hard, and neither is Cas, but he still presses the soft rises of their cocks together through pajamas and gym shorts. The ache of intimacy makes his heart pound and his breath bottom out in his chest. “Cas,” he breathes, and can’t say any more.

“Dean,” Cas says, his voice deep and reverent, like a prayer.

Dean has to kiss him. There’s just no way around it. He pulls back enough to find Cas’s lips; Cas’s breathing hitches and sighs against his cheek, and Dean tucks that sound away in his memory banks, cherishes the way their mouths learn to speak to each other. When Cas angles deeper, Dean keeps it light, all playful lips and brushes of his nose. He teases and goads him right up until Cas grunts in frustrated desire, grabs him behind the ears, and takes what he wants—which, damn. Is way hotter than it should be. Dean surrenders with a groan, feeling his knees melt and his fingers clutch in Cas’s T-shirt.

It’s a long time before Cas is satisfied. As their kiss drifts apart and their eyes flutter open, it leaves Dean feeling dizzy. Not in a bad way. More like he just doesn’t care which way is up anymore, so long as Cas keeps looking at him like that. 

And he does keep looking at him like that. For a very long time. With his fingertips petting slowly back and forth through the hair behind Dean’s ears, his eyes sweeping over every line of Dean’s face until Dean starts to flush and squirm under the scrutiny.

“Um,” he says at last, licking his lips. “We should, uh—either eat breakfast or—”

Cas blinks as if he’s coming out of a trance. “Oh. I’m not really hungry, I don’t think,” he says, cheeks pink and eyes dark.

“Yeah, me neither,” Dean says. Not for food, anyway. He swoops in again. This time their teeth knock a bit in their enthusiasm, but Dean’s past caring. Especially when Cas hooks the fingers of one hand in the front of his shirt and starts to move him backwards. Step by step, Dean lets himself be walked out of the kitchen by the inexorable strength of his fallen angel. And maybe he knocks his shoulder on the doorway, and it’s possible that they play pinball a little in the hall, but this just gets them giggling into each other’s mouths, bright-eyed and breathless, and it’s perfect. Dean feels an effervescence bubbling up inside him, a joy that he can’t ever remember feeling in his life, and he thinks he could probably die right now and be a happy man.

But hopefully the world will give him a few more minutes, at least.

Finally, they make it to Dean’s room, Cas kicking the door closed behind them. Dean’s hands can’t decide whose shirt is a higher priority, so he ends up tugging uselessly at fabric, not helped by the fact that he doesn’t want to give up contact with Cas’s lips.

Ultimately, Cas proves smarter than him because he breaks the kiss long enough to pull his own shirt off over his head, turning his hair into a ruffled, fluffy mess that Dean can’t wait to rake his fingers through. But he takes the chance gets his own shirt off too, and when they come back together, the spark of skin on skin is electric. There’s so much—so much  _ Cas _ to get his hands all over, hair to shoulders to waist to—

The backs of Dean’s knees hit his bed, and he goes down with an armful of Cas crawling on top of him. He’s heavy in just the right way, thighs parted over Dean’s, and leaning down for a kiss when Dean’s hands register a familiar texture. 

“Hey, did you steal my pj pants?” he asks, his fingers plucking at flannel-clad thighs.

Cas draws up short, and he looks down like he honestly has to think about it for a second. “Yes? Is that a problem?”

Dean chuckles. “Nope. Absolutely not a problem. In fact, kind of the opposite of a problem.” Then he cranes his neck so he can rub noses with his angel, and Cas looks so adorably confused about it, he has to do it again. “They’d look way better on my floor, though.”

Cas squints at him, and seeing that kitten-squint at point-blank range sets Dean’s heart a-melting. “I’d like to think we’re past the point of pickup lines,” he says.

“Hey, if it gets us naked faster…” Dean says with a grin. Then Cas shifts on top of him, and he feels Cas’s cock nudging against his own, at least halfway to hard. Dean had only been at half-mast, but that—that’s helping, now, for sure.

It gets even better when Cas plucks his wrists from where they’re still resting on his thighs, moves them up over Dean’s head, and pins them to the bed with the strength of his own arms. Dean’s blood rushes south so fast, he feels his fingers tingle and his toes curl.

“Dude,” he gasps, “How much porn did you watch?”

Cas narrows his eyes again. “You’re not going to forget about that, are you?”

“Are you kidding me? Do you know how fucking hot that was? Hearing that you were curious, that you had a sex drive at all?” Dean rolls his head back on the mattress and his hips up into Cas’s weight, straining ever so slightly against his firm hold. “Shit. I had to go rub one out in the shower just thinkin’ about it.”

“I wondered,” Cas says, low like a purr, bending back to the spot under Dean’s ear that sends sparks down his neck. He learns quick. “I hoped.”

“Fuck,” Dean gasps again. “We should—we should seriously get naked—”

Cas rolls to the side to wriggle out of the pajamas; Dean shucks his gym shorts and scoots higher up on the bed. Cas is back on him before he can even get them all the way off, and he ends up kicking them off his ankles while thoroughly distracted by the tingling thrill of Cas’s skin, the bone-deep pleasure of his kisses. It’s endlessly satisfying, sharing groans back and forth. Cas’s are deep and sonorous, rumbling in his chest; Dean’s have gone to high-pitched whines already, and he can’t even spare a second for shame.

Now that they’re down to the skin, Cas settles his hips over Dean’s again, and Dean squirms until their cocks line up. “Shit, Cas,” he gasps, the nudge and push of flesh together scattering his breath and stirring his blood. Cas screws his eyes tight shut, head thrown back, then pops them open to look down between their bodies.

It’s a mouthwatering sight, Dean has to admit. Especially when Cas reaches down and cups them both in his broad palm and long fingers. Friction and pressure sparks along Dean’s skin.

“Fuck,” he moans, working his hips as much as he can with Cas’s weight on him. “Oh fuck, you feel so good.”

“Dean—” Cas brushes his hand up and down their cocks, too loose, the drag almost tickling. “Dean, I—there’s so much—”

“What’d’you wanna do?” Dean asks, hands skating up Cas’s sides and down his arms as possibilities spin in his brain.

Cas looks a little wild around the eyes when he says, “Everything?”

“Well,” Dean tries not to laugh. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We can start—hey—” he cuts off when Cas moves off of him, moves down, shoving his way between Dean’s thighs, and then, “ —oh  _ mother—” _ slipping his mouth right down over the head of Dean’s cock. Slick lips, just the barest inexpert edge of teeth, and Dean’s spine bows to press up into the unexpected heat and suction.

Cas slips off, eyes wide and lit like a lightning storm, and says with utmost seriousness, “Everything.” Dean feels the word as three little puffs of air against the damp, twitching head of his dick.

“Yeah. Good. Yep. Everything—” Dean stutters, and he gets his hands in Cas’s thick locks long enough to push him back down. He knows it’s a dick move—as it were—but he can’t think beyond his need to get that mouth back on him. Cas doesn’t seem to mind. Just opens up and groans around his dick like it’s a delight, swallowing him down to the root. Dean feels himself twitch against Cas’s soft palate, feels Cas’s throat and chest spasm with the strain, and lets him up. Cas pops off with a gasp; he’s red-faced and lust-glazed as he pants between Dean’s legs. Dean’s never seen anybody looking so debauched.

A fallen angel, in-fucking-deed.

“I got an idea,” Dean says. “Turn around.”

And  _ wow _ , the combination of that incredible debauchery with the confused tilt of his head sends Dean’s heart into a wild frenzy of feeling. “Knees up here by my head,” Dean clarifies. Cas catches on quick, knee-walking up onto the bed, flipping himself so his feet are on the pillows and his head is down by Dean’s hips. “Do as I do,” Dean says, pulling on Cas’s legs until he’s straddling his head, knees under his shoulders. Like this, Cas’s cock is right in his face, and it’s such a pretty cock, long and deliciously curved, fatter in the middle, flushed dark. Dean’s mouth waters. “Don’t be afraid to push deep, alright?” he says, licking his lips as he takes Cas’s cock in his hand. Whatever Cas has to say in answer, it’s lost in a gasp when Dean pushes that tempting foreskin down to meet his own curious lips. He tastes of salt and musk, the brine of low tide, and Dean feels the tension ignite in Cas’s thighs at the contact.

“ _ Oh, _ ” Cas sighs, lowering himself until he’s on his elbows and they are belly to chest lengthwise. Sometimes this position is too much work, but sometimes— 

Sometimes he wants to feel and be felt at the same time. Sometimes he wants to get really up close and personal twice over. Besides, he really fucking loves deep throating, and this is the best way to make that happen.

At first, Cas doesn’t do much except pant into Dean’s groin and give him tiny, careful little thrusts that are almost maddening. Dean tilts his head back and loops his hands up and around Cas’s hips, pulling him down until he feels his throat penetrated by the thick head of Cas’s cock. Cas twitches, but he gets the message, and his next thrust is a slick slide out and all the way back in, until his balls touch Dean’s nose and his cock pierces Dean’s throat open. He can’t breathe, but that’s fine. When it gets to be too much, he pushes on Cas’s hips, and he pulls out immediately.

“Sorry—” Cas gasps. “Sorry, I—” 

“Don’t be.” Dean can hear his own voice getting rough and throat-fucked, just how he likes it. “Just let me catch my breath.”

But before he can get back to it, Cas shifts on top of him, and he feels his inexpert lips and tongue around his cock. Dean swears once, then pulls Cas’s cock back to his lips, and— 

And Cas is a fucking fast learner because Dean can feel him tilting his chin up to take Dean’s cock down the hot tunnel of his throat. Dean groans, rough as sandpaper all the way up from his belly, and it kickstarts a feedback loop of suction and sounds, a tactile communication between all of their most intimate places. Cas’s hips work in slow rolls, pushing in as deep as he can go, pulling back to let him breathe, then fucking deep again. That syrup-slow rhythm rocks Dean’s cock in and out of Cas’s mouth like a dream, an agonizing churn of pleasure that drives Dean out of his mind.

Sex is always fun, but Dean has a particularly indecent passion for giving oral. It’s impossible to escape the human reality of sex when you’re face-first in your partner’s junk. You learn their scent, the texture of their hair, the way their skin moves; you’ve got a front-row seat to all their little ticks and tells. So when Cas’s balls start to tense up, when Dean feels his mouth go lax around his cock, when he starts to push in, in,  _ in—  _

Dean stops. Slips his mouth right off and leaves Cas jerking against his shoulder while Dean wriggles out from underneath him. He rolls a little to let him up and whines, all kinds of pitiful.

“Dean—”

“Be right back,” he says, reaching for his bedside table. True to his word, he returns before Cas can even stop squirming from his aborted orgasm, waving a tube of lube where Cas can see it. “Eh? I’m a genius, right?”

Cas’s eyes go wide, and he nods. “Me? Or—”

“That’s the beauty here, champ.” He gets himself back in position and squirts lube on two of his fingers, then passes it down toward Cas’s waiting hands. There’s barely even a pause before Dean hears the cap click and the lube squelch again, and he counts himself lucky that his boyfriend’s so smart.

Boyfriend.

_ Fuck _ .

With that thought jittering around in his brain, Dean slides Cas back into his mouth—god, he fits perfectly, solid on the flat of Dean’s tongue, firm and slick at the back of his throat—and reaches his lubed hand over Cas’s hip. From this vantage point, he has a great view of his own fingers sliding down Cas’s asscrack, seeking the heat of his entrance, circling there, dipping in and out, testing the waters. Cas’s breathing stutters into the crease of Dean’s thigh. Then he’s following suit, wicked heat engulfing Dean’s cock again and blunt, broad fingers nudging toward his hole. Anticipation and lust spin together in Dean’s belly, thick and sweet.

Dean has seen what Cas’s body can take, so he slips both fingers right into his tight heat, following his eager thrusts, searching out sweet spots that make Cas twitch and whine. Cas is a little more cautious. He eases in knuckle-deep but stays annoyingly still until Dean starts pumping his hips between the too-shallow finger and his teasing mouth. Cas gets the picture then, swallowing Dean to the root and shoving two fingers deep, and oh, fuck, Dean’s in heaven. He groans and rubs, works his hips, opens his throat wide, just lets himself drown in the haze of giving and receiving pleasure.

He senses it, even with his eyes closed. The gathering tension in Cas’s thighs and stomach, the clench of his ass and swell of his cock, his hips working in thoughtless little ruts, the high-pitched whine and the way his mouth goes lax, open around Dean. Cas tries valiantly to keep sucking as he nears the crisis of his pleasure, but eventually he’s just panting around Dean’s hard flesh, and frankly? That’s fine. It’s hot as hell. 

Even with a chance to brace himself, it hits like a comet crashing to earth. Cas clamps his thighs down around Dean’s head and fucks into his throat as he comes—Dean’s dick slips from his lips as he cries out, shamelessly loud—and holy  _ fuck _ , Dean almost comes himself. 

It's a long, long moment before Cas collapses, a boneless, twitching mess draped over Dean's chest and stomach. Dean presses open-mouthed kisses to Cas's thigh and ass cheek as he gently withdraws his fingers. 

He lets Cas cool down, idly petting the fingers of his not-lubey hand through Cas’s hair. Several long minutes later, he breaks the languid silence to ask, “How's the weather down there?” 

That seems to wake him up. Cas pushes himself off to the side and stares down at Dean with a look of such awe, Dean feels a little embarrassed. He wants to tell him it was just a blowjob, not some wondrous feat. 

Instead, he wiggles his hips under Cas's head, his cock flopping drunkenly back and forth. “You still wanna play?” he asks. “Or you down for the count?”

Cas's eyes snap up to Dean's dick, and even though he's lost some rigidity, Cas looks like he wants to swallow him whole. He scrambles down from his perch near Dean's face, situating himself between Dean’s thighs and swooping in to capture his lips. Dean grins into the kiss, then opens up for his tongue. Dean wonders if he will ever stop counting kisses. What is this, their fourth? Eighth? Dozenth? He’s already lost track. That’s fine. He has more important things to worry about, like memorizing the flick of his tongue that makes Cas’s breath stutter like that. Or the fact that Cas is maneuvering so that both his hands are free, drifting away from his kiss to watch his hands petting down Dean’s stomach toward his cock—which is perking back up just fine under his attention.

“Dean,” Cas says against his lips, and he sounds…  _ broken _ , but in the best way, like he's cast aside his old shell and can't wait to get put back together. “Dean—what do you—how should I—?” 

That gentle touch so close to his dick is a damn good start, spreading the heat and anticipation. “You're doin' great,” Dean says, then takes his own cock in hand. “Tug on my balls a little?” Cas does. His fingers are tacky with old lube, and he fumbles to get the right angle, but even the fumbling feels good. When he finds the right way to loop his thumb and fingers around and pull in a massaging stroke, Dean's vision whites out. “Yeah, yeah, just like that,” he pants, his hand picking up speed, legs falling open. “Get your fingers back in me,” he says, fishing around in the covers for the tube of lube. 

Once he’s slicked up again, Cas's fingers slide home easy as anything, and this time he doesn’t hesitate. Dean never really appreciated before how big and nimble Cas's hands are, but he’s not likely to forget again. Not after this. Two fingers stretch him open, so sweet and satisfying, Dean thinks he might fucking cry. Then Cas leans in, other arm wrapping under Dean's shoulder and neck to hold them close, so close they're sharing breath, and Dean has no choice but to stare into those huge indigo eyes. Cas holds him like a precious thing, hot and real and right fucking  _ there  _ as his fingers start to move and—fuck, there it is, the itch across his nose, like a sneeze but worse. He slams his eyes closed and picks up the pace of his own hand on his dick. 

“Is this good?” Cas asks, sounding fucking wrecked and eager and curious all at once. His fingers beckon 'come hither'  _ right  _ into Dean's sweet spot. He trembles. 

“Yeah,” Dean manages, muffled against Cas's shoulder, legs spreading without conscious effort. “Yeah, s’good—fuck—real good, Cas.” He bites off words with a whimper. 

“Tell me how, Dean,” Cas says, lips and breath tingling against Dean's neck. “Please.” 

Dean groans and rides his hips down against Cas's hand. "Jesus, you're gonna kill me," he says. “Slower?” 

Cas gives him slower, a caramel-sweet melting glide that Dean can feel in every inch of his skin. 

“Nnfg, fuck. M-more in and out.” 

That glide lengthens, grows hotter and sharper as Dean is left empty and then filled again. He thrusts over and over, getting the strength of his arm and even his shoulder into it. And hell, what a shoulder, muscles bunching and firm under Dean's clenched fist. Dean's legs move restlessly, then tighten down on Cas's smooth hips between his thighs, pistoning in the barest phantom of fucking. Cas's spent cock presses up against the back of Dean's thigh, sticky and cold and still spitting out little aftershocks of come, and somehow even that's a turn-on right now. 

“Next time,” Dean gasps. “Next time, you're gonna fuck me. Shit. Oh, shit, Cas, you're gonna be so good, we— _ fuck _ ,” Dean breaks off as he sees stars. 

“If I had known,” Cas says, a tremor in his voice. “If I’d—I would have tried to last if—” 

“Don't you dare,” Dean barks, his fist flying over his cock, knuckles brushing both their bellies. “Don't you fucking dare, that was so fucking hot, feeling you come down my throat like that—Jesus, I just want—fuck—I want—” 

Dean's a half-second from coming, everything in him coiled tight like an over-wound spring, but Cas jolts back. Not his hand, his hand is still working his hole like he was fucking born to finger fuck, but suddenly Dean is faced again with those eyes, Cas’s eyes, glowing like grace but one hundred percent human, piercing down to Dean's core, and then—

“ _ Dean _ ,” he says. 

Dean bursts. He can’t hold the eye contact, so he grabs at whatever part of Cas he can reach— neck, shoulder—clings to him tight while the storm of pleasure scours him clean. Wave after wave of bliss breaks over him, rushes out, leaving him washed up on shore, spent, basking in the heat of the sun. When he opens his eyes, all he sees is Cas. Cas’s smile, true and beaming. The sight of Cas holding nothing back is so beautiful, Dean can’t look away, even though he might go blind. 

For a long, long time, they just grin at each other, uncontrollable, their faces so close Dean can’t even see both of Cas’s eyes. He presses their foreheads together, their noses, doesn't even notice that a couple of tears have leaked out of his eyes until Cas’s thumbs cross the cool tracks.

Somewhere along the line, grinning turns to kissing, languid and loose-limbed, sloppy, sticky, and sweaty, and then to just lying together, nose-to-nose. Dean can’t stop touching him. Like he’ll vanish into the morning mist if he doesn’t constantly reassure himself that Cas is real, and really here.

“So. Worth the risk?” Dean asks eventually.

“ _ Yes _ ,” Cas says immediately, vehemently. Then, quieter, “You always have been.”

Dean takes his face in his hands, marveling at this incredible being. He thumbs over Cas’s cheekbones. “Feeling’s mutual, Cas,” he says eventually. “Feeling’s mutual.”

They lie there for a long time, trading whispers of each other’s names, little secret hopes. They laugh at nothing, just for the joy of sharing it. They explore the intimacy of each other’s skin without urgency. 

Somewhere in the midst of soft unhurried kisses, while Dean's thinking about gearing up for round two, they hear footsteps in the hall, followed by a swift tap at the door. “Dean? You in there?” It’s Sam.

Cas stiffens under his hands; Dean clears his throat. “Uh. Yeah.” 

A weighty pause, and then, “Is Cas with you?” 

Dean and Cas lock eyes. Dean lifts his eyebrows; Cas gives a little shrug. “Yeah, he’s in here,” Dean confirms with a giddy grin. 

More silence, and then a tentative, “Are you guys, uh…” 

Dean kisses one of Cas’s knuckles, not looking away from his eyes. “Yep.” 

“Oh, thank god,” Sam says, explosive, with a thump like he's just collapsed against the door. “It’s about fucking time, you  _ idiots _ .”

It’s too much. It’s all too much, and Dean bursts into uncontrollable giggles. 

Sam’s still talking. “Seriously, I thought I was going to have to beat you both over the head. I was gonna ask Rowena for false-memory spells. Or maybe some kind of sex pollen—” 

“Thank you, Sam,” Cas calls out, since Dean is busy hiding his laughter in the pillows. “Your support is appreciated.” 

“Right. Well. Congratulations,” Sam finishes lamely. “Are you gonna eat this french toast out here? ‘Cos it’s getting kinda soggy.” 

Wiping a tear from his eye, Dean gets himself under control enough to answer. “Yeah. Yeah, we'll be out in a minute.” 

“Take your time,” Sam says. “And, like, maybe shower.”

“Thank you, Sam,” Cas says, voice firm with implied dismissal. 

Sam’s footsteps retreat to the tune of his continued monologue. Dean catches at least one more “‘bout fucking time.” 

Dean buries another short round of laughter in his hands. “Welp. Guess the cat’s out of the bag now.” He starts to haul himself out of bed, casting around for his gym shorts. 

“Dean.” Cas's voice stops him. When he turns, Cas is looking at him with soft, soulful eyes that send butterfly wings fluttering in Dean's chest.

“Yeah?” he asks. 

“I love you, too.”

~~

Dean is an early-enough riser, but it usually takes something worse than an empty space on the other side of the bed to get him up before dawn. Apparently, he’s become the kind of person who can’t sleep right if their partner isn’t curled up on the other pillow. So. Here he is. He really hopes he’s guessed right about where Cas has gone at this hour, or else he’s freezing his nuts off for nothing.

Steam billows off the two cups of coffee in his hands, joining the puffs of his breath. Winter’s coming on fast; the patch of wilds behind the bunker is a bare brown cluster of sticks and dry grass. Dean’s not sure what there is to do in a garden this time of year, but Cas has been out here every day for weeks, coming back with his hands covered in dirt and mulch, his eyes bright, calm, and clear, and his nose ice-cold when he presses it to Dean’s cheek.

Sure enough, Dean spies him. Broad shoulders hunched against the chill—that maroon hoodie is not quite enough, even with the hood up. The rents from the wendigo’s claws have been neatly sewn up by Cas’s own hand; Dean likes to press his hand to those scars, fading on Cas’s flesh but still there in cotton. They’re a good reminder. 

At any rate, Cas wears that familiar shade of red while perched on an old wooden chair in amongst all the brown. There’s a pile of flowers gone to seed at his side and a dirty plastic pot between his feet. Dean hears the dry  _ plink-plink-plonk  _ as the seeds fall from their dry pods into their container. 

Dean’s footsteps rustle on the newly foot-worn path; Cas looks up. God. Dean’s not sure he’ll ever get over the intensity of blue Cas has in his eyes. Especially out here, with treetops just barely dipped in morning gold and everything else earth-brown and muted. Dean doesn’t even want to speak too loudly.

“Hey,” he says, a puff of white breath on the air. “Brought you something to warm you up.”

Cas stands, brushes his hands off on dirt-stained jeans, and takes the steaming mug between his palms. Then he steps closer, pulling Dean in with his other hand and nuzzling his cold nose against Dean's, angling for a kiss. 

Between them, their breaths are billowing fog, but Castiel’s kiss warms him all the way down to his toes. It’s a sweet, slow-growing warmth that roots deep, ready to weather any storm.

“Yes,” Cas says when he pulls back, barely room for their noses to brush between them. “Yes, you did.”

  
  


~~fin~~

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Kudos make my day; comments make my week and keep me motivated. You can follow me on [tumblr](https://jemariel.tumblr.com/) to keep up with my stuff. Feel free to reblog [this post](https://jemariel.tumblr.com/post/189093012621/jemariel-jemariel-jemariel-jemariel) if you feel like sharing. Thank you!!
> 
> OH AND ALSO! If you feel like coming and hanging out with a bunch of cool Destiel nerds, you can join the [Profound Bond discord server.](http://discord.profoundbond.net/) It's fun ^__^ I like it there.


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